Why become a Foster Parent?

Your choice to become a foster parent will be the most rewarding and sometimes challenging decision you make to improve the lives of our children. As a foster parent, you will use your life experiences to help a child experience a safe and stable family setting, develop community connections and transition to a permanent family placement.

What are the steps to become a Foster Parent?

In order to become a licensed foster parent in Virginia, there are various qualifications and requirements to start the process. HumanKind will guide you through the steps to becoming a foster parent, which include:

• Orientation & Mutual Assessment Meeting: HumanKind agency representatives provide an information session to explain the requirements and answer questions related to becoming a foster parent.

• Pre-service Training: 16 hours of required training is offered to prepare parents to understand the needs of children in foster care, understand the tools and philosophies that guide foster parenting and explore thoughts, feelings and behaviors around each training topic

• Home Study & Paperwork: After pre-service training is completed, an assessment of a parent’s ability to provide a safe and nurturing family environment for a child is conducted and a written document is completed that covers life experiences, personal relationships, finances, medical history and criminal background checks

• CPR & First Aid/Medication Management Training: Being CPR and First Aid certified is important for working with kids of all ages. All foster parents are required to complete CPR & First Aid training, which can be done online. Additionally, foster parents will receive Medication Management as part of their foster parent training course.

• Approval: Once all the requirements have been met, a family’s home study is approved and sent to local departments of social services for consideration of children needing foster care placements.

• Attend monthly trainings/support groups: We want our foster parents to continue learning and developing skills to better care for the children in their homes. All foster parents are required to attend 12 hours of foster parent training a year to maintain their license.