Foster Care : Supporting Child Health

The Role of Foster Parents

Foster parents are the primary day-to-day caregivers for children in foster care, responsible for meeting basic needs, ensuring safety, and supporting the child’s health and development. Their skills, experience, and motivations vary widely. Medical providers should be aware of this variability and, if there are concerns about the adequacy of care, they should document findings and notify the child’s caseworker or the local Department of Social Services (DSS) immediately.

Foster parents should:

• Provide accurate health information to providers
• Attend and participate in medical visits whenever possible
• Follow through with recommended treatments and appointments
• Avoid delegating visits to “transporters,” who often cannot provide meaningful health information

Kinship Care

Increasingly, children are placed with relatives (kinship care) as an alternative to non-relative foster care. Kinship care can offer stability and emotional continuity but may carry risks such as financial strain or unaddressed safety issues. Kinship caregivers are eligible for foster care program supports and require the same medical vigilance as other foster placements.

The Role of Caseworkers

Caseworkers coordinate all aspects of a child’s care, including health services, consents, and communication between the medical team, foster parents, biological parents, and other professionals. They should:

• Provide medical providers with available health, social, and family history
• Ensure necessary consents for treatment and releases of information are in place
• Support attendance of foster parents, biological parents (when appropriate), and guardians at appointments

Questions for Caseworkers and Foster Parents

Use the following table during intake and follow-up visits to gather essential information. Add your own questions to fit this to your usual style of history taking.