What to Expect & FAQs

Caring for Young Children and Teens

Foster care providers that care for young children and teens provide a nurturing, stable environment in which a child can progress mentally, physically, emotionally, and socially. They provide children with guidance, discipline, and safety, as well as addressing a child’s special needs.

Depending on the child's particular needs, care typically includes:

• Providing appropriate clothing
• Providing children’s basic physical and emotional needs
• Providing a separate bed and place for his/her belongings
• Transporting children to medical and dental appointments
• Attending recreational and enrichment activities
• Monitoring school attendance, performance, note special needs and accomplishments
• Helping children through the grieving and adjustment process that accompanies removal from their own home and placement
• maintaining a record for children of their time in care, including developmental milestones, photographs, report cards, etc.
• providing consistent and realistic discipline and guidance that is age appropriate and does not involve corporal punishment

Expectations

As a child foster care provider, you will be part of a team supporting the child placed in your home. Included in the team are:

• The Licensing Worker who helps you through the licensing process and is available for ongoing support and consultation.
• The Child Protection Worker or Case Manager who works with the child and the biological family and creates the plan for the child to either be reunified with the parents or for another permanency option.
• The Guardian Ad Litem who represents what is in the best interest of the child back to the court.
• Other agency and community professionals working with the child and family.

What is it like to foster an adult?

Adult foster care homes provide room and board as well as services stipulated in the placement plan developed for each adult. An essential component of adult foster care is overnight supervision.

Depending on the adult’s particular needs, care typically includes:

• Administering or monitoring medications
• Providing assistance with activities of daily living
• Prompting for personal hygiene
• Assisting with managing cash resources
• Arranging for medical appointments, transportation
• Preparing meals and dining together

Adult foster care licensors and case managers carefully match residents with providers whose skills and/or willingness to provide various services are in keeping with the resident’s needs. 

Expectations

Adults who are entering foster care depend on many people to help them transition to their new home. The foster care provider plays a big role in helping residents get acclimated and feel like a part of the household.

As an adult foster care provider, you will be a part of a team supporting an adult placed in your home. Included in that team are:

• The Licensing Worker who helps you through the licensing process and is available for ongoing support and consultation.
• The Case Manager works with their client and his/her team to create an individual plan for the client. The plan may include some goals for the client to work on with the foster parents help.
• The Guardian is someone appointed to make decisions such as medical, financial or help decide an appropriate place for their client to live
• The client's family may give input for their loved one's individual plan or visit their loved one at the foster home or have the loved one come back home for a visit.
• Other agency and community professionals working with the adult and family.

In our home and foster family, I/we believe all members-regardless of age, gender or ancestry-always have equal rights to:

1. Have their ideas, feelings and dreams heard and respected
2. Have their needs considered seriously and fairly
3. Know clearly who’ s responsible for what, and what our rules and consequences are
4. Make and learn from their own mistakes without shame or excessive guilt
5. Be seen as a unique, special and worth-while person
6. Learn and grow at their own pace and in their own direction
7. Enough privacy, space, and freedom of choice
8. Protection from family members who abuse, neglect, share ,or violate personal boundaries
9. Unconditional love, respect and physical, emotional, and spiritual safety
10. Their own friends, values and activities, as long as they are not harmful, in the judgment of the foster parents

The rewards of being a foster parent for children include doing the little things every day that show you care - take the children to school, take them to an appointment, fix dinner, read a bedtime story, and teach life skills along the way. Basically you provide daily care and guidance with acceptance and patience. There will be challenges along the way, but knowing you are making a profound impact on a person’s life is immensely rewarding.

Children

• Be a positive influence in the life of a child
• Make a difference in families and communities
• Share in the growth of a child
• Help a child build a foundation on which to be successful in the community
• Contribute to the lives of children and families
• Tell bedtime stories
• Attend local school, team, cultural, and social events with a child

Teens

• Be a caring adult in the life of a youth - possibly beyond the time the youth is in your home
• Assisting the youth to learn independent living skills
• Helping a youth transition to being an adult
• Assisting the youth to pursue post-secondary education or employment

Adults

• Assisting an adult to safely live in the community
• Teaching the adult some independent living skills
• Establishing and maintaining family and community connections for the adult

Reimbursement for Child Foster Care

Reimbursement for the expenses involved with caring for children is helpful. Foster care providers receive approximately $9 - $26 per day per child in their care and may also receive an additional payment to care for a child’s special needs.

There are guidelines for determining the amount of financial support to foster care providers. Funds available to foster care providers vary on a case-by-case basis depending on the needs of the child and the efforts of the foster parent to meet those needs. For more information, visit the Northstar Care for Children website.

Deciding to foster is a huge commitment and leap of faith! Realistic Expectations for fostering families is information from foster parents as they share about how being prepared and connecting with other families like theirs is a step on the road to successful placements. Following are some articles we have found helpful for new foster families and those deciding if fostering is right for their family. 

Resource: Realistic Expectations for Fostering Families (PDF)

Reimbursement for Adult Foster Care

The basic rate for Scott County adult foster care is established by Minnesota Department of Human Services and is designed to cover the basic needs of children and adults participating in the program.  There are various methods of payment for adult foster care services.  These include:

1. Private funds
2. Earnings
3. Income from a pension
4. Group residential housing (must meet eligibility requirements)
5. Waivered service funding (developmental disabilities, traumatic brain injury, community alternatives for disabled individuals and elderly waiver)

Rates are determined for adults needing care through an assessment performed by MN Choices.