We recommend that foster parents write a journal entry every day for the first 30 days a child comes into care. Often there is a honeymoon period and when that ends, the behaviors begin. You don't know what behaviors you'll see with a new foster child and what their needs are. Having thorough documentation for the first 30 days helps develop patterns and identifies possible future service needs. After the first 30 days, discuss the journal frequency with your team. We recommend continuing to update the journal at least once a week even if it's just to say "Everything is fine. No issues." You should also journal during times of stress and during transition times, such as when the school year is starting or ending, or spring break is starting or ending, or if unsupervised visits begin. You should also write to document significant events such as a presentation at school, an injury, a new achievement. Finally, document what your children are saying before and after parenting visits. This is not an attempt to catch the birth parents doing something wrong. Rather, it's documenting the experience from the child's point of view using their own words. This could reflect negatively on the birth parents, or it could reflect positively on them. Children usually exit parenting time with strong emotions and opinions. Recording them accurately will help your entire team care for your children more effectively.

Make sure you set a regular time to write. If you decide to write "when you have some free time" it will never happen. Foster parents don't have free time. The best time to write is often at the end of the day when the kids are in bed. It allows you process, decompress, and actually sleep better knowing the day's events and interactions have been logged when they were fresh in your mind and not days afterward.

As a foster parent, have you ever felt alone or abandoned? You were given the responsibility to care for children who have experienced trauma and loss, but it doesn't seem like your caseworker has any idea of what you are going through. If they don't know your struggles, how can they support you? That's why we track views throughout our system. Our view tracker shows you which members of your foster care team have seen your journal entries, discussion posts, photos, child behavior pages, etc. and when they saw them. Just knowing that other members of your foster care team are in the loop and know what you are going through is incredibly important. You are not in this alone. You've got a team of professionals right beside you helping you care for your foster children. And now, thanks to you and FosterCare.Team, they'll know exactly what you and your foster children are going through and how best to help.

Additionally, caseworkers are given a 'knowledge' score in their agency dashboard. It represents the percentage of their teams' content (specifically journal entries and discussion topics) they have viewed in the last 30 days. Supervisors have access to this information, as well as other metrics, for all of their caseworkers. This is one way our system measures foster parent support and makes that metric available to supervisors.