There are great benefits to placing foster children in early childhood programs offered by the public schools. The benefits can be life long.

Foster children coming out of an abusive, neglectful or just overall bad living situation need structure, consistency, and they need to develop social skills. Most foster children have delays with their education needs and extra help is necessary to meet their education and developmental milestones.

Developing social skills is a great benefit from these types of programs. In most cases, these children have not been around other children in healthy settings. Some do not even know how to relate to adults. So the exposure in the school setting at an early age gives the children a stable foundation of their school careers and relationships. Educationally, it allows these children to start kindergarten along with their peers and not with a huge gap of their abilities.

The pre kindergarten program is for 4 year old children, and some districts also have a program for 3 year old children. In most areas, foster children qualify for pre-kindergarten without qualifying under the foster parents. Children that have disabilities (speech, mentally retarded, developmentally delays, etc) may also qualify for the preschool early childhood program. This type of program is based on testing of the child. The disabled child may also qualify for different types of therapies at school that he/she may need.

Research shows that poor children have a great advantage when they become involved with early childhood education programs. With this early foundation, having a successful adulthood is a possibility. It helps lower the rate of serious crimes and incarcerations.

An added bonus for the parents and foster parents is the early childhood program is also involving the parents. Some districts have workshops and classes that are offered to the parents. The classes or workshops can cover teaching your child learning strategies, different disabilities that your child may have, etc. One of the major goals is to get the parents involved with their children’s education.

More reading:

Finding Help for Your Younger Foster Children Under the Age of Three

Foster Parenting and Working Fulltime

Why Do Your Foster Children Call You Mom and Dad?