NO 1828
Tips for Helping a Child or Young Person Feel Safe and Secure
Make yourself available to a child or young person as she or he moves into their room, at the same time being ever mindful about not moving in too quickly. Help with practical matters, an extra blanket or pillow, a hot water bottle, juice, biscuits, fruit extension leads, light bulbs, coat hangers, waste basket, tissues – all are legitimate options that assist settling in through enhancing bodily comfort.
Give special attention to each child or young person’s Memory Box, a designated container or place where personal mementos, treasures and trivia can be saved. Without a Memory Box, it is easy for these special photos, trinkets and objects of importance to become lost, especially when looked after children or young people have histories of moving from place to place.
Help to keep the young person’s Memory Box safe and encourage them to keep adding memories to it.
Help make a young person’s bedroom a welcoming, safe and comfortable place, complete with a desk and chair for homework.
Share household chores with the child or young person instead of leaving a list of chores to complete on their own. Children and young people learn important lessons through doing chores that help them achieve order and organization in their life, a foundation for feeling safe and secure in the future.
Work out what are the young person’s favourite foods and invite them to help you make that food or prepare other dishes for you or the family so that cooking and being together around the kitchen is ok.
Go with the child or young person to open days and parents’ night at school, showing that you take an active interest in their learning and educational achievements. Whereas school may have been a negative experience before, do everything you can to help turn that around and demonstrate how learning can be fun even though it involves work.
Get into the practice, early on, of spending time together with the child or young person, or as a family, reviewing events of the day and talking about what is coming up tomorrow and during the rest of the week.
Identify and explore with the young person and then actively nurture rhythms of daily life in your own home around family and individual mealtimes, chores and responsibilities, TV, homework, recreation activities, leisure pursuits and spiritual life as appropriate. Think RHYTHMS not RULES!
Through early involvement with the child or young person living in your foster home, where might you locate them on Professor Maier’s continuum between ¨living radars¨ to ¨go-go¨ kids? How have you adjusted your own natural approach so as to engage more responsively with the developmental rhythms of the looked after child or young person in your home?
When are the times in your home when everyone comes together and thereby has an opportunity for ¨family talk¨? In addition to those times when everyone is together, driving somewhere to go shopping or participate in an event, when does ¨family talk¨ take place in your home and what topics are discussed?
How does the looked after child or young person living in your home meet other family or extended family members? Family friends? School mates? What about the friends of your own children or young people who are expected to share their home with a looked after child or young person?
Develop family rituals and rhythms with intent, taking into consideration what fits best for this child.
LEON FULCHER and THOM GARFAT
Fulcher, L..C. and Garfat, T.
(2008) Quality Care in a Family Setting: A Practical Guide
for Foster Carers. Cape Town: Pretext, pp. 26y-27
