Homeschooling while fostering?

[4KookieKids]

My husband and I are considering fostering teen parents and their children (only one pair at a time), but would like to hear thoughts and experiences regarding fostering, in general, as well as fostering while homeschooling other children (this fall our kids will be 7, 5, 3, and 1), please! Not sure if this is the right board for this question, so please tell me if not! :)

[LMCme]

I'm also interested -- we are just finishing up the licensing process, so hopefully it will work out.  We had some good discussions with our social workers during the process.  What they basically said was that they don't care if we homeschool our own kids, but the foster children would, of course, be going to school.  Which makes a lot of sense.  I'd be interested in hearing any BTDT, though :)

 

 

Best,

LMC

[vonfirmath]

I'm also interested -- we are just finishing up the licensing process, so hopefully it will work out.  We had some good discussions with our social workers during the process.  What they basically said was that they don't care if we homeschool our own kids, but the foster children would, of course, be going to school.  Which makes a lot of sense.  I'd be interested in hearing any BTDT, though :)

 

This is the experience of the foster families I am familiar with.  I'm not even sure if they would be allowed to send the child to a tuition-based private school -- because of the chaos of what if their next foster family cannot afford that.

[4KookieKids]

I know you're encouraged to keep things as "stable" as possible for the foster kids, so I assumed we'd continue to provide them the same schooling as when they were placed (I know people that drive to a school all the way across town that they wouldn't otherwise even have kids in, just so the foster child can have more consistency). I just wondered how, if at all, it affects your homeschool (more than just another of your own children, maybe, and outside of the normal family challenges that come with fostering). Maybe what I'm saying doesn't make sense and I'm just looking to hear from others. :)

[rebcoola]

 We only do school age children.  For us as far as homeschooling has gone the only affect has been having to be done by certain time so we can provide transportation.  We also no longer have the freedom to just take a day off and do a Saturday instead.

[Spryte]

In our state, we can homeschool our kids, and foster kids have to attend PS.

[dragonflyer]

We do foster care and homeschool.  So far we have only had kids in the local elementary school, the teachers, administration, and case workers have all been vocally supportive of our decision to homeschool.  In some ways, it has really helped foster kids to catch up because I already have resources to remediate.  The teachers have loved that while they are struggling to teach multiplication/division I am working with the kids to solidify addition/subtraction facts.

The one extra struggle has been finding childcare for my kids (who are not in school) while dealing with court dates and teacher conferences.

[Kat w]

Second everything above.

In Florida foster kids have to go to PS.

 

As far as disruption of your homeschooling and family issues go ( which I'm assuming was your Q. )

 

It was very disruptive to ours. That was our experience. Others may have different exp.

 

My kids thought. They go to PS. Why can't I?

 

Um. Cuz I'm your mom and love you and want the best for you. That's why.

 

I addition, the friends the teen will make will be an influence in your kids. Don't think they wint. They will.

That was disruptive to my household too.

 

I commend you. As one whose been there tho, maybe you could do relief parent stuff fir a local girls home etc.

 

That's what we did first n thought. Ah, no problem . we've don't this.

 

Entirely different beast when it's living in your home. And we had worked with our teen fir years thru girls home .

 

If I had it to do over. I would stick to relif parenting and ir wait til my kids were gone from the nest.

[Blink]

Hi there! My husband and I were foster parents for about three years, until we adopted from foster care this spring. Our bio kids were 7, 8 and 10 when we started fostering, and we only accepted children younger than our youngest. So, our situation was quite different, but I’ll share a few thoughts here anyway.   

 

The biggest challenge for us, which we didn’t really anticipate, was the amount of time foster parenting would keep me away from home. It did affect our homeschooling to a certain extent, and the amount of driving required was, at times, overwhelming. 

 

As several previous posters have mentioned, foster children usually continue to attend the same public school and, because they’re living out of zone, must be driven to and from school. Schools in our area can run as early as from 7:05-2:10, which had an impact on our homeschool schedule. This past year our boys attended a school that ran from 8:40-3:10, so it wasn’t an issue at all. 

 

When fostering children who had just entered care, our agency asked us to bring the children for a medical check-up within 48 hours, and dental and eye exams as soon as reasonably possible. I would expect a teen parent and baby to have at least a few medical appointments here and there. Also, many children in foster care attend therapy after school, and have multiple visits with their parents each week. If you add in things like meetings with teachers, calls to pick up a sick child, extra-curricular activities that the child may already be enrolled in, tutoring, etc., the time away from home really adds up. We were lucky that our bio kids were old enough to come along and read a book, stay home, hang out at Dh’s work, or be dropped off at my parents’ house (with school work to do) while I was out. 

 

Having foster children who were younger than school age had a huge impact on our homeschool, but if you have other babies and preschoolers around I’m sure you’re used to keeping little ones occupied while you work with the older kids. I’d never had that experience, so our first day trying to homeschool with a new toddler in our home was an eye-opener. 

 

I’m writing too much here, so I’ll just say that our experience with fostering was overwhelmingly positive, and we would do it all again in a heartbeat! Even if you decide that fostering isn’t the right choice for your family right now, I really urge you to keep it in mind for when the time is right. If you have any specific questions, I’d be happy to answer them! 

 

Wishing you the very best!