COVID-19 has changed the world we live in, and not surprisingly, the way our foster care program operates. Foster care team members have learned to stay safe and social distance, while still maintaining important communications with foster families and children.
“We cannot stop the essential work of assessing the wellbeing of our children and providing supportive services to our families due to a pandemic,” said Trista Thompson, foster care supervisor. “Our children and our families need us more now than ever.”
Caseworkers are doing their best to find creative ways to reach their foster parents and foster youth. Regular home visits are now taking place in driveways, backyards, and on porches and patios. Home visits are a vital part of the foster care process because they allow families and youth to express themselves and give caseworkers a chance to make sure everyone’s needs are being met. While the visits do look different now, the goal of them has not changed.
A pandemic is hard to understand and process for many of our foster care youth. So, our foster care team has also been working hard to keep youth informed and continue to remind them that DePaul will be there for them no matter what.
Our foster care team is also preparing for a surge in the need for loving foster homes, as a result of the pandemic. So work continues to find and approve high-quality, loving homes for children entering the foster care system using every tool we have.