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This type of foster care is not for everybody. You have to be willing and able to take placements at a moment’s notice. For myself, someone that likes to have control of the situations this can be a challenge and something that you have to work through.
This can be exciting and pose obstacles for the foster family to overcome. You never know how many children you will wake up to find yourself mothering in just a few short hours. You will be working with a wide range of ages.
One of the challenges that you may face is being unprepared for an infant with formula, diapers, and all those other little baby things. Another challenge that I was faced with is having children already using my baby and toddler car seats, then getting more children needing car seats. These children do not come into foster care with any clothing, diapers, or other belongings in most cases.
To do emergency care, you also need to understand that you will not get a lot of information about the child. There are times that you only know an age range, the gender of the child could also be a question, and most of the time ethnicity of the child is not known. The information that you are given can be occasionally wrong though not intentionally.
Here are the two big draw-backs for some foster parents. There will not be a lot if any at all information about the child’s behaviors, medical needs, or school needs. They will not be able to give you a time frame of the foster child’s stay in your home.
An emergency placement could be a couple of days or a few weeks. In some cases, it could go on for a few months with the caseworker telling you that the child will be leaving in a couple of weeks. Emergency placements can also turn into other kinds of foster care placements if you choose that.
Related posts:
How to Decide What Kind of Foster Care is Right for Your Family
