Why We Need to Know Our Rights

A Message from the Brighter Futures Workgroup Parent Committee

As young parents in foster care, we need good information about our rights, responsibilities, and the resources available to us so we can grow as people and parents, inspire our children, find love and support, and fight for what our families need.

In reality, there’s a lot we don’t know. We often don’t know about our right to go to school or get job training even after we have a baby, the right to see our families wherever they live, the right to choose the doctor we want for our children, or the right to learn to manage money before we leave the system. We don’t know that fathers in care have the right to spend time with their children, or really that fathers in care have any rights. When we leave care, some of us don’t know about all the financial help we should have access to or all of our housing options.

Don’t get us wrong. Most of us do meet some adults in the system who let us know about resources out there: usually we have at least one amazing adult in care, whether it’s a staff person, caseworker, supervisor, lawyer, social worker, or foster parent, who advocates for us and our children. But we’re rarely given all the information about our rights and responsibilities when we need it, and sometimes we’re told that we don’t have certain rights even when we know that we do.

We Need to Understand Our Responsibilities, Too

It can also be hard for us to understand our parental responsibilities because we’re still in the process of becoming adults and because often we’re treated like children. On the one hand, sometimes so much is done for us that we take it for granted and fail to step up and act like responsible parents. On the other hand, we’re constantly told how to raise our children, often by people who have no real knowledge about raising children, and that can make us doubt ourselves and stop advocating hard for what we believe is best for our kids. We’ve been told things like, “Let him cry. He’s not going to die,” when we just wanted to pick up our baby. We’ve been told, “We’re going to have to report you because you’re not feeding your baby enough,” when the doctor said the baby was nursing fine.

We’ve been told things like, “Let him cry. He’s not going to die,” when we just wanted to pick up our baby. We’ve been told, “We’re going to have to report you because you’re not feeding your baby enough,” when the doctor said the baby was nursing fine.

We’re not trusted to grow as parents, and at the same time we’re treated as if we’re supposed to know how to be parents, even though all parents have to learn as they go. We’re threatened with losing our children, but we’re rarely given good information about what might lead to an investigation or what could protect our families from that.

The Right to Grow and Pursue Happiness

We also don’t know that we have the right to get involved in activities that we enjoy and take care of our mental health in ways that we believe are right. Most of us don’t know that agencies can pay for extracurricular activities for our kids, or that we can do activities like boxing, art class, or going to the gym to help us develop coping skills and relieve stress in a creative manner instead of getting tight. We’re often forced to go to the therapist at our agency, even if we just sit there for an hour and pretend that everything is fine. We’re not told that we have the right to select a therapist outside the agency, and to only open up to people we’re comfortable with.

When we know we have these rights, we’re able to connect to people who we trust. We’re able to connect to resources that help us grow and flourish. We’re able to become proud role models for our children. And we’re able to help our children grow into proud and wonderful human beings.

There are a lot of rights and responsibilities that those of us parents who worked on this website didn’t know we had when we first became parents in care, or even by the time we left care. We created this website so you can know more than we did. We believe that with this information, you and your children can flourish and thrive while in care and once you’re on our own.