Episode 36 – What Foster Families Wish Caseworkers Knew and What Caseworkers Wish Foster Families Knew with Brian, Travis, and Courtney

TRANSCRIPT:

Brian (00:03.829)
Welcome world to the foster friendly podcast. I’m Brian Mavis your host with my two intrepid co-hosts. I don’t even know what intrepid means

Courtney (00:15.182)
Me either.

Travis (00:17.175)
It was a make of a car in the 90s, the Dodge Intrepid.

Brian (00:23.097)
Okay. I think it’s a good thing. That’s why I said it. So Intrepid Travis, Intrepid Courtney, yes. Our assignment will be to look up what Intrepid is after this podcast. And I might, we might have to edit that out. So, well, you too, you Intrepid too. Hey today and, not just today, the month of

Courtney (00:23.246)
Yes.

Courtney (00:31.596)
I hope it is.

Brian (00:53.139)
March is Social Worker Appreciation Month and we do appreciate social workers and we want to highlight the incredible work that they do in foster care. But before we get going, I’d to ask you guys a question because I would say most kids don’t think when I grow up, I want to be a social worker.

When we do our I Belong Project videos, surprisingly, it’s seemingly surprising to me, a lot of those kids do say I want to be a social worker. that is definitely an honoring answer that those kids who are in the system say, hey, the person I want to be like is my social worker. But to YouTube, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Courtney (01:38.69)
Definitely.

Brian (01:51.329)
I could actually see Courtney wanting to be a social worker or Mother Teresa.

Travis (01:53.753)
I was just gonna say it.

Courtney (01:54.734)
That’s funny. I actually wanted to be a teacher from the time I was very young, a teacher and a mom. that’s what I ended up becoming. I didn’t, kind of lived the, mine was a straight and narrow path. didn’t, didn’t fear much.

Travis (02:00.515)
So set the record straight.

Brian (02:13.009)
Wow, yeah, mine, yeah, that’s not my answer. That’s a straight and narrow path, that’s for sure. Travis, how about you?

Travis (02:15.138)
Ahaha.

Courtney (02:20.915)
Hahaha.

Travis (02:24.195)
I just wanted to be intrepid and I, that’s all. It was a general thing. I just wanted, and hopefully I did it. We don’t know what it means though yet, but, I, well, I grew up in North Dakota on a farm and I did not want to be a farmer. So more for me, it was the negative of what I didn’t want to be. Uh, I think I wanted to play in the NFL and that didn’t really typical boy. Yep. So I,

Courtney (02:26.456)
Yeah.

Brian (02:26.744)
Wow, you did it! I think, no, think, yeah, I think you did. No, no.

Brian (02:42.681)
Mmm.

Brian (02:47.641)
Mm-hmm.

Courtney (02:49.07)
Typical boy.

Brian (02:50.349)
That, yes, yes, that’s my answer. I also was going to be an amazing 130 pound Walter Payton and I’ve now busted way past that weight by the way.

Travis (02:53.891)
nuts.

Courtney (02:55.459)
Yeah.

Courtney (03:02.37)
Yeah.

Travis (03:10.989)
So it quite pan out.

Brian (03:13.675)
No, didn’t. Our high school didn’t even have a football team, so that’s my excuse. Otherwise, for sure, I would have been a professional football player. And then, of course, the last thing, the last thing I wanted to be. I even said it to God when I was baptized, please don’t make me a minister. And he saw that as a challenge.

Travis (03:19.308)
Courtney (03:20.526)
Good one. Good.

Travis (03:37.516)
Wow.

Courtney (03:40.878)
You

Brian (03:44.115)
So yeah, so that happened. So yeah, what’s not a straight and narrow path? It was me kicking and screaming into my path. anyway, but I bet there’s a lot of social workers who also said, I did not think to be that I didn’t even want to be, but maybe there was something pulling them there that felt bigger than themselves.

Travis (03:45.526)
That’s funny.

Travis (03:53.943)
That’s a great story.

Brian (04:13.369)
that got them down that path. And so I want to think about

I know there’s a lot of confusion about social work and social work is bigger than just working with kids in foster care because you can work with the elderly and social work and things like that. But we’re gonna focus obviously our talk on social workers about foster care because this is called the Foster Friendly Podcast. And so to begin with,

When you think of social work in the system, sometimes people think of a kind of a negative connotation of red tape and that there’s excessive bureaucracy or adherence to these roles and formalities. And it’s easy for us to view caseworkers as part of this red tape behind foster care when really they’re just individuals who care and have entered this field to make a change. So based upon your guys’s own

personal experience of knowing social workers, tell me what your impression is of them.

Courtney (05:33.056)
Yeah, I mean, to me, it’s what you just said. Like they didn’t enter this field to for people to look down on them to say they’re they’re making my life hard as foster parent or they’re making this kid’s life hard. Like that’s not what their their intentions are. Their intentions are to make a change, help these kids grow, help these families grow and see that see what they need to provide for these kiddos and their care to support them. Again, talk about foster, foster care, social workers, caseworkers. You know, I’ve chatted with quite a few of them. And it is funny, like you said, a lot of them say, I didn’t think I was going to be a

caseworker growth, you know, as I was growing up, or that I went into social work because it’s such a broad category, not thinking it was going to be foster care, social work or caseworker and, you know, I got led that way one way or another. So it is just interesting to see. I don’t think you could, I don’t think you would go to any single social worker, caseworker on this planet. And they say, I went into it to be part of red tape and the bureaucracy of, of the government, you know, like that’s not why.

Brian (06:03.885)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brian (06:11.801)
Mm-hmm.

Travis (06:25.973)
Uh-huh.

Courtney (06:30.252)
And so think we, first and foremost, we just all need to have that in our mindset of the why behind what they’re doing and keep that as part of the team. We’re part of the team. And when we take this mindset of these caseworkers of something negative, we’re doing nothing but causing more of that back and forth friction that shouldn’t be there.

Travis (06:44.736)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (06:48.717)
Yeah, I think that’s really important to keep in mind the why and imagine or even come out and ask someday if you have that relationship to say, I’m curious, why did you get into this? I think that would be a very humanizing conversation, not unless they say that got into it to get the big bucks.

Travis (06:55.021)
Yeah.

Travis (07:07.191)
Yep.

Courtney (07:11.854)
Yeah. Yeah, no kidding.

Travis (07:13.389)
What state are you in then? Yeah. Well, that’s a perfect segue into what I was thinking, Brian, because I really was thinking that to me it’s, I think we lose sight of each other’s humanity, which is kind what you were alluding to, of like, I think, and I think as we have more of this conversation to come in this episode.

I believe we’re going to see more of the parallels we really have as foster parents and caseworkers. Like I think they’re super parallel in many ways, but I do think like we both often fail to see the humanity in the other maybe because we’re swallowed up by this giant system in a way or, or, or blinded by it, whatever you want to. Yep.

Brian (07:50.412)
Mm-hmm.

Courtney (07:53.966)
Yeah.

Brian (07:54.457)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Caseworkers and foster families.

Travis (08:00.895)
Mm-hmm. Yep, totally. So with that being said, you know, we know that foster parents really, they want to be more understood. They wish that caseworkers understood them. mean, one of the, think, facts behind foster parent attrition and quitting is just that they don’t feel seen or valued just generally enough. And so, but what do you guys think it means sort of when foster parents say they wish caseworkers understood them?

Brian (08:31.863)
Hmm. I’ll start and then Courtney can correct me. see. Let’s… I know when we were actively fostering inside the system, it felt like, we’re living this 24 hours a day and you do not understand what it’s like to have

Courtney (08:39.521)
You

Brian (09:01.251)
to wake up to stress, live through the day, feel it as you’re going to bed at night, maybe having to get up at night once, twice, three times, who knows, dealing with it, and then the day starts all over again, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and…

I think foster parents feel like this isn’t a job for us, this is our life and that’s how we’re different and I wish you would appreciate that.

Courtney (09:47.19)
Yeah, so true. And caseworkers that are listening to this don’t send me nasty messages, but I have often heard.

Travis (09:55.139)
Send him to Brian!

Brian (09:56.921)
Yeah, my email is C-O-U-R-N-T-U-N-E-Y.

Travis (10:05.844)
Ha

Courtney (10:07.054)
I’ve heard a lot of foster parents say, I think all caseworkers need to be a foster parent first. And I get what they’re saying behind that. And I’m not saying that that needs to this rule that we need to implement. But really, I get the heart behind it because it’s so easy for a caseworker to come over. Well, not easy, but they come over to our house and they see these big emotions that are growing on, or these big behaviors. And then they say, well, all you got to do is this.

Brian (10:15.352)
Right, right, right.

Courtney (10:29.74)
You know, and it’s like, that sounds so great. That sounds so easy. But then when you’re living this, like Brian just described day in and day out, and these things aren’t just going away. And now my sleep’s being deprived or now this is happening. It’s like, I wish you you saw what this was really like. And again, I think, again, caseworkers have great intentions. So they come over to your home, they do their check ins. They really want to know how it’s going. They want to give advice because that’s part of their role. But it’s like just that friction again of

You know, can talk to anybody about posture tear, if they’re not actually doing it, it’s really hard to explain what the day to day is like versus just, we have this big behavior right now. But that is all the rest of the stuff.

Brian (11:08.971)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then on the flip side, we’ve got caseworkers saying they wish foster parents understood them. And so we already kind of alluded to this a little bit, but Courtney, there are differences in what caseworkers’ roles are inside the foster care system. So help our listeners understand like,

First of all, just what kind of different caseworkers are there inside foster care?

Courtney (11:44.972)
Yeah, so it’s different state by state, even county by county, they can have their own systems of how they put this into place. But typically, there are multiple types of caseworkers. So you have the intake workers who are the workers that are getting those phone calls saying, hey, there’s this situation and they’re the ones going into the home and checking things out to see if this kiddo does need to be removed. So they have all that heavy lifting before a kid is removed from their care or from their parents care. And then

The ongoing caseworker is the one that’s now assigned to that case to get to know everybody in the case, get to know the situation and kind of be the kiddo and their parents or whomever they were removed from their caseworker. And then there’s the ongoing or the resource worker, sorry, the resource worker is the foster parent’s caseworker. And so this was something that really confuses people when they first start is they don’t realize you are often in a sense assigned two caseworkers. You’ve got that ongoing caseworker who’s assigned the family.

Brian (12:29.337)
Okay.

Courtney (12:36.504)
And then you have your resource worker who is the one coming into your home. They are checking on the foster family. Their role is to make sure the kid’s safe in the foster home. And then on top of those, like those are the three most common. And then you also will have kinship caseworkers who just work with kinship homes or adoption workers who just work in the adoption side of foster care. And then on top of all of that, we have something called family find. And most counties now have it where they have a family find worker or workers.

Brian (12:43.833)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (12:51.95)
Mm-hmm.

Courtney (13:06.03)
For their role, their role is to, there’s this new kid in care, Billy, he’s 10 years old. My job is to go see all the connections of his family members, his friends, people that knew him before he entered care to see if there’s a kinship placement that this kid should be with. And so their role is to be an investigator really of their past and of the people that they are linked to genetically or just family friends or whatever it might be. So again, that’s just, there’s so many different caseworkers within this one system and foster parents.

Travis (13:26.883)
Hmm.

Courtney (13:36.024)
especially new foster parents don’t always understand that, to understand when they’re talking with their resource worker and complaining about something that they don’t even realize, that resource worker, that’s not their job. They don’t have say in that, they have say, but their role isn’t the ongoing, right? That’s ongoing caseworker’s role. And so it can easily become just this intertwined web of misunderstanding, even in that sense, if we don’t understand what their role is.

Travis (13:49.379)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (14:02.315)
Right. Okay, so we got to answer what we wish caseworkers, what we wish they knew about foster parents. Let’s flip it on, say, what do caseworkers wish their foster parents knew about them? And we don’t have to guess, right? Because we know the answer from some caseworkers.

Travis (14:26.349)
Well, Courtney, you’re going to get into actually some of answers you actually have from them. I’ve done some reading, also just knowing, I’ll speak first on this and I get a good strategy in these podcasts as we go first, Brian, and then Courtney kind of cleans up the mess up or just gives his better answers. But yeah, we just get on base and it’s just, here we go. We’re going to hit it deep. So, but I do know, and this is where, to me, I do think this is such a parallel of different experiences, but

Brian (14:41.173)
Yep, yep, clean. Yeah, we try to get on base and then she just knocks it in. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Travis (14:56.045)
but a similar feeling and a lens of this idea that like, think a lot of caseworkers would say and feel that they don’t feel seen either from the foster parents in terms of all that they are doing. So that means the bureaucratic constraints that can be probably nightmarish. We don’t see all of these things that like connect all those dots. The complexity of the cases, my gosh, mean, as we already talked about what

Brian (15:12.505)
Mm-hmm

Travis (15:24.161)
we kind of feel like when maybe they come into our homes and you’re like, we live this 24 seven, you don’t see, you you might say, Hey, what if you did this? And, you don’t see I’m living this. I’m well, what they would say we probably don’t see is the things that are keeping them up at night or all of the, the traumatic cases and the decisions about, you know, if I have this removal, it’s gonna

take apart this family for a while. And it’s the right thing to do, but it’s a major decision that’s going to rock a family. like, so those types of decisions, the weightiness, all that kind of stuff that again, we don’t see because of the system and like they’re in whole nother role would be some things that come to my mind.

Brian (15:55.065)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (16:08.717)
Mm-hmm.

Courtney (16:09.58)
Yeah. And good with kind of our initial question of, what do you want to be when you grow up understanding these case workers? This is their job. That doesn’t mean they’re not human, right? That we don’t dehumanize them. They’re humans, but this is this is their job and their job is a typical for the most part, a nine to five. Right. So I think it’s so easy for foster parents to think that our caseworker is our go to person about everything. And nowadays, most caseworkers give out their cell phone numbers to two foster parents.

And so we have to realize that caseworkers, they need a shutoff time as well. And our role, we signed up as foster parents, we signed up to live the 24 hour day. When I’m teaching, my role is done at end of the teaching day. I’ve got stuff I’ve got to do at home or lesson plans or whatnot. But my role with the kids and the parents is typically that the school day. Same thing with these caseworkers. At the end of the day, they need their time to debrief. They need their time to go.

exercise, be with their family. And so I’ve heard from a lot of caseworkers, it’s really hard when foster parents want to go to them immediately for every little thing that could be saved till tomorrow at 9 a.m. or 8 a.m. whenever they start their day the next day or send them an email that they don’t have to answer to right in the moment. So just remembering this is part of their job and there’s always going to be an on-call worker. So the difference between understanding me as the caseworker, your resource worker, and then

I’m off work right now, so you call the on-call worker. You don’t call me during my time with my family. So think that’s a very common thing I hear from caseworkers is that foster parents don’t see because we are the 24-7, so that we don’t see them. We think that they’re 24-7 as well. And I just exhaust them.

Brian (17:51.959)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and they’re dealing with more than just your family. so many of them have more than they should have to manage. So they’re carrying that stress. And even when your family is going well, don’t assume that then your caseworker must be having it easy because they’ve got multiple families that you’re dealing with. And there’s probably always a family that’s in crisis.

Travis (18:00.397)
Yeah.

Brian (18:24.941)
So they’re always feeling that crisis, no matter. They can have 10 good cases and one bad one, and that’s the one they’re thinking about.

Travis (18:35.309)
Yeah. And I think just, I don’t care what profession it is just in life. If, if part of your daily existence involves regularly just putting fires out, that is extremely taxing.

Brian (18:48.181)
Mm-hmm. It is. It is. Yeah, I think it’s a very, very hard job. And it’s one of those jobs that… And I guess I’m probably not kosher to say, but teachers get love. mean, they’re more visible. I mean, your kids go see the teacher. This world of foster care, it’s kind of swept under the rug. It’s hidden. So your job…

Travis (18:49.613)
so.

Brian (19:17.857)
is hidden. when you have people cheering on that teachers need to be better honored and better paid, you don’t hear that kind of thing when it comes to social workers. And frankly, their job might be tougher because they’re dealing with all the tough stuff.

Courtney (19:40.75)
Yeah. Yeah. And the red tape, we spoke about red tape earlier. Like that is a real thing. And we often as foster parents, we expect that these caseworkers just have all this power to overcome the red tape and that it’s their fault or they have something they can do about it. So we’re like, no, they have to live within their parameters or work within their parameters that are set as well. And so, you know, we can vent to a caseworker, hey, this is frustrating. But if we put it on the lens of, hey, you need to change this.

Brian (19:44.461)
Yeah, yeah.

Courtney (20:08.792)
realizing they can’t change a lot of that stuff that we think that they can change. There is the red tape there that they are working amongst. And there are things I’ve had cases where it could be like, I hate that this is the current situation or I don’t agree with this, but I can’t do anything about it.

Brian (20:21.997)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve heard a lot of that too.

Travis (20:24.759)
That’s a good point.

Yeah, I just happen to be the face of sort of the system that you’re seeing.

Courtney (20:32.204)
Yeah. So I asked a couple of caseworkers, said, what do you wish foster parents knew? And I was they would give me some answers about themselves, really. But they gave me answers about the foster parents, which I understand. Again, they’re often thinking about other people or how to make this system better. some of their answers they gave me was they want foster parents to understand that every placement is so different. And again, they didn’t turn this on the lens of them, but I want to turn it on their lens because I want to highlight the work they do in kind of what you said, Brian.

Travis (20:41.88)
No.

Courtney (21:00.462)
They have a huge load and multiple families and all these kids have different cases. And it’s not this one size fits all. This is the perfect plan for this kid. That’s the perfect plan for all the kids. And so we need to realize as foster parents, they’re working with multiple cases at once that are very different and very hard. And we as the foster parents need to be able to make those adjustments and be flexible to understand, yeah, this case before, this placement before, it went this route.

But that doesn’t mean this case is going to go this route. Or that doesn’t even mean what the judge said about this one because of this. We don’t know a lot of background. You know, we’ve got a kiddo in our care right now. I don’t know a lot of the history. Got a little bit of audit, but I don’t know a lot of the history before she entered my home. And I don’t need to know that. Right now, I need to know, like, I’m going to ride a safe and loving place and trust that the caseworkers, the judge, the people on the team are doing the best they can for her future and for what’s best for her and just entrusting them.

Right? Trusting that they are. And there might be times we’ve, I’ve heard some caseworker horror stories, right? But I think those are pretty few and far between. I don’t think that’s the common place. So if we put that mindset of like, we’re part of a team and this team all wants what’s best for this kiddo, I think it’s going to help us get further.

Brian (22:06.243)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (22:13.027)
Mm-hmm.

Travis (22:13.731)
Hmm, yeah, well said.

Courtney (22:17.87)
Another thing that they told me is they feel like foster parents need to let go of their expectations of what being a foster parent will be like. We enter this, I think it’s easy. Again, why did you become a foster parent? Probably because you want to make a difference is the most common answer. And that can be wrapped up in, I think I’ll just love them like I loved my other kids, or I’ll just open my doors and be safe and that’ll be enough.

Brian (22:18.679)
Ahem.

Travis (22:40.269)
Mm-hmm.

Courtney (22:44.456)
But understanding those expectations that it’s not going to go the way that we expected. In case workers, when they do training, when we do foster care training, we can tell you that all day long. But until you actually live it, again, it’s just really hard to understand that.

Travis (22:58.115)
Yeah, very true.

Courtney (23:02.818)
Yes.

Brian (23:02.841)
So in the world of foster care caseworkers, and Travis, I know this is something that you’ve actually done some research on, but the turnover is very high. And I don’t know if off the top of your head you have a feel for what the rate typically is.

Travis (23:13.987)
Yep.

Travis (23:26.723)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s similar. It’s fascinating. It’s very similar to the foster. Again, the parallels, the foster parent attrition rate. talked about these things can go by directionally in their impact. So 40 % national average, it can be 20 to 60%, depending on what type of agency. So that’s a massive 40 % loss yearly.

Brian (23:34.937)
Hmm.

Brian (23:48.249)
So you’re saying if some agency or government hired 100 caseworkers today, by the year from now, there’d be 40 of them would have quit.

Travis (23:50.133)
Up to at least.

Travis (24:04.951)
Yeah, Yeah, it’s devastating.

Brian (24:06.637)
Wow, yeah, that’s huge. And I mean, that illustrates how hard it is, but it also impacts the kids because there’s another adult in my life who’s come and gone.

Courtney (24:23.47)
Hmm.

Brian (24:24.259)
So, I mean, why? Why is it so high?

Travis (24:30.093)
or ads, yeah.

Courtney (24:30.254)
It’s hard. It’s so hard. You know, this is The things they’re dealing with are just hard painful emotional real raw things it’s not you know, Again, I say it’s a nine-to-five job but it’s not we know that they go home and they think about these things and they’re pondering and they’re staying up at night because What about this and what about that and this case is going this way and I don’t agree whatever it might be like

Brian (24:31.488)
Yeah

Travis (24:53.101)
Mm-hmm.

Courtney (24:57.366)
as much as their job should be nine to five, they are still carrying a lot of load or feeling they need to carry a load of something that’s so heavy and burdensome.

Brian (25:00.857)
Mm-hmm.

Travis (25:07.971)
Yeah. Well, and we do know actual from data. mean, sources will say like the actual, some of the big reasons. there’s things like high caseloads, high pressure, stressful work, underpaid, undervalued, the magnitude of the decisions. mean, to your point, all of these massive, like tough things. I wanted to read a, uh, just a quote from, this is from the Boston Globe, because this is another thing that’s outside of all the other.

Brian (25:23.545)
Hmm.

Travis (25:34.945)
A lot those other things are things that I think we would kind of expect, you know, really high pressure, tough, but there was an interesting factor also as well. This comes out of the Boston Globe and this is from Ethel Everett, who is a leader of the caseworkers union. This is her quote again on why many caseworkers are leaving. She said, the job clashes with many new employees idealism.

They think they’re going to be working with families, helping families engage in services, be self-sufficient, move on to higher education. The reality is we’re moving kids night to night. We’re driving kids across the state for one night placements to get them to school. We’re putting band-aids on situations.” then quote goes on to say, they market that they’re here to help families, but some of the situation, it just felt like I wasn’t. And like, that’s really getting real of like,

Brian (26:25.817)
Hmm.

Travis (26:28.461)
Sort of that idealism meets the harsh reality of like, man, this thing is crushed. It is way harder in a lot of cases than it even seems on paper. And I just thought that was an interesting tidbit.

Brian (26:40.791)
Yeah, you’d think that the kind of people who are drawn towards this kind of work would be, have that idealism, part of what draws them there. then they face the buzzsaw of reality. And that would be their hopes conflicting so much with what their reality is that…

and their experiences are tough that they’re like, this is not what I signed up for.

Courtney (27:13.642)
Yeah. And you know, the age old saying put yourself in their shoes. And really, I think that’s the overarching theme of this podcast episode is as foster parents, we need to put ourselves in their shoes as caseworkers. We need to put ourselves in their and the foster parents shoes. Right. And really see each other for what their role is and and the value that they bring to the table and recognize that and support it. And yeah, like how can we support foster caseworkers? Well, you know, this month is, as we said, caseworker social worker appreciation month.

And but not just this month, always like how can we do that? How can we show these caseworkers that we see them? We see the work that they’re doing and make them feel valued so they don’t quit. So any thoughts there?

Brian (27:58.871)
Well, I think again, back to some themes that we’re discovering in this call is, they’re not different than us, they’re human. And every human loves to know that somebody sees what they’re doing and appreciates them for it. So a handwritten letter that says that, that says, I know your job is hard.

I want you to know I appreciate you. And if you can give a specific example of something that they said or did that helps you, put that down and then get it in an envelope, put a stamp on it, walk out to the mailbox, put it in the mail.

Travis (28:50.947)
That’s great. I love that because for me, this is not in the same exact realm, but I have a brother who’s disabled and a physical therapist came to the house yesterday to see him. the similarity I want to say here is that high caseload for her, tough work as well in a different way. But in meeting my brother, just felt…

Brian (29:04.195)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (29:11.363)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Travis (29:18.795)
just so much gratitude of being around him and his joy and kind of that kind of stuff that she called and left our family a message about how that made her day. And I was just like, your point, Brian, of just the simple things of just showing gratitude for the things they do or like, like you said, even if it’s just even in a conversation, just thank you so much for like all you’re doing. I mean, I just have to imagine like if they were to hear that more from their families and whether it’s a letter, that’s great. But even just like the, the verbal affirmation from time to time, just that

Brian (29:26.745)
Hmm.

Brian (29:46.573)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Travis (29:48.191)
That probably carries you throughout your day. mean, things like that.

Brian (29:51.139)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Courtney (29:53.07)
Yeah, and I think what like, you know, caseworkers come into your home, they’re in your home at least monthly when they’re over again, not blaming them, not making it seem like you’re shaming or blaming them. It’s okay to ask questions. It’s okay to, again, we’re part of this team. How can we do this together and making them feel you’re part of this togetherness with them rather than a, I’m blaming for you for this thing that they have nothing to do with. I mean, if we can, again, put that lens on all the time when they’re with us of

They’re on the team with me. They want best for this child. They want best for my family. What we portray to them is going to come off so differently than that shaming and blaming game that I think is very common that they get from families.

Brian (30:36.001)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I’m thinking about our listeners in the next time that they know that their caseworker’s coming over, just make their experience of coming over better and different. So something simple like make them tea and just sit down and just like, something probably decaffeinated because they don’t need ramped up.

more. know, something, some, some, some calm. I know I’m drinking coffee as we’re doing this. Some, something calming, have, have some like calming music on in the background. Just have them come in and say, when they leave that, leave your house, you’re to be like, man, I love how I felt when I was in there. I mean, I could feel the stress, melting away.

Courtney (31:04.142)
Like you, Brian.

Brian (31:31.651)
just with the tea and music in the background.

Travis (31:35.021)
Yeah. Yeah.

Courtney (31:35.628)
That’s great. And I think like, you know, we have a big case and things are going hard and maybe there’s a court case coming up and we have friends or family members or even our kids that know that this is happening and have been praying or, you know, helping our family through this. And they’ll message us after a court case and they’ll say, hey, how was court? Hey, I hope things went well. You know, good job sticking there with this kiddo.

I wonder if those caseworkers are getting the same type messages that we’re getting as foster parents. So even as a foster parent, like, hey, I’m getting this message. Could I send the same type note to these caseworkers saying, thanks for sticking in there with us and this kiddo during these hard times. And even just that, like recognizing what they’re doing can go such a long way.

Brian (32:06.295)
Mm-hmm.

Travis (32:16.877)
Yeah.

Travis (32:21.971)
yeah, that’s huge. I really love what you said earlier, Corrie, of this idea that just the reminder that we’re on the same team, because when you feel like you are adversaries in things in life, your approach to one another relationally, the way that you sort of, think we can be more presumptive, we can have false assumptions. mean, our mind goes to that much quicker than when we’re like, hey, we are on the same team.

And I think the idea is that in foster care, you know, ideally everyone is wanting the same thing for these kids to temporarily maybe be taken out of their home, be safe, stable, stabilize their family, do everything that they can to come back in. Reunification being the first goal. If that can’t happen, then we look at other things, but that is the thing. And so that doesn’t mean that we don’t have hiccups and problems with our caseworker or we see things differently, but yeah, I love what you said of just the general idea that the reminder that we’re on the same team.

and how much that should shift our mindset.

Brian (33:18.445)
Yeah. Well, caseworkers, we are grateful for you. We are glad that you are on our team and we’re on your team. We do see you and we know what you do is hard, but it’s important. And so we are grateful that you’ve felt compelled, called who knows what that feeling was exactly to do something.

that was not an easy path, one that’s probably underappreciated, but you’re not alone. We see you and we thank you.

Courtney (34:01.166)
Yeah. And if you’re a foster parent listening, again, it is a caseworker appreciation month. Show some appreciation this month. And again, not only this month, but always.

Brian (34:10.999)
Yep. All right, guys. Thanks for being intrepid. Now we get to look up what that means. All right. Bye.

Courtney (34:16.108)
Yeah.

Travis (34:18.048)
Always.

Look at her.

Courtney (34:21.506)
Google search, here it comes. See ya.

Travis (34:24.931)
Stay tuned!

All right, we’ll see y’all.