Foster parents given the essential tools of parenting
Foster families are in a unique position to help children in their care by providing a safe and stable home.
Foster families are in a unique position to help children in their care by providing a safe and stable home. They may parent children who have experienced loss and who have various levels of resilience.
To support a child’s social, emotional, and physical well-being, foster parents should be prepared to maintain the child’s current connections while building a relationship with the child.
Social development services are essential in a community not just to be office based but to also engage with the community.
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Joined by some of the local motivational speakers, and South African National Council on Alcoholism (SANCA), local social workers under the Department of Social Development, invited foster parents and potential foster parents to a seminar hosted at the Malebese feeding scheme centre on February 16, to motivate them and give them guidelines in parenting foster children.
Lee Nkosi, one of the motivational speakers invited gave the parents a great motivation, encouraging them to pray with and for their children.
“We have identified some of our foster and potential parents around the area, seeing that being a foster parent is not an easy job, we saw the need to motivate and guide them.
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“One of the main problems we have identified is that drug abuse is their biggest problem, so, we have to intervene as social workers, hence we invited SANCA,” said Gloria Mojela, Social Development supervisor, responsible for Pimville, Chiawelo and Protea Glen.
“We are not going to stop here, we are going to do follow-ups. We currently have support groups with some of the foster parents but we want to encourage these potential foster parents to join them,” she added.
Although the focal point was on alcohol drug abuse, other issues were addressed too, such the issue of social media communication amongst young people.
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Parents were urged to become inquisitive about what happens on social media, for instance, they need to learn the social media terms these children use and need to monitor their children.
The tip you need to always remember as a parent is:
Walk the walk. Don’t just tell your child what you want them to do. Show them. Human is a special species in part because we can learn by imitation.
We are programmed to copy other’s actions to understand them and to incorporate them into our own. Children, in particular, watch everything their parents do very carefully.
