Building Bridges, Building Families

Family Services Program Director Sarah Medrano-Palmer

This month, we’re reflecting on how we impact foster and adoptive parents. The most obvious way we impact adoptive and foster families is, we help build a family. “People who have wanted for many years to be a parent, finally becoming parents – it's pretty amazing to facilitate that and see that happen,” says Sarah Medrano-Palmer, Director of Family Services. “One of my hopes for the way we impact families is giving them a good foundation and preparation to parent a kid through their developmental stages.” 

One of the areas we work with foster and adoptive parents the most on is preparing them for caring for a child from a different racial or ethnic background. Transracial adoptive and foster placements are a regular part of child welfare, and we have been working with parents on how to handle these placements sensitively and supportively for a long time. “To have a skillset around parenting kids who have identities different from yours – I think our practice has gotten more sophisticated around that,” says Sarah. “For us it's not just saying, if I was parenting a Latino child I’d take them to a festival, I’d cook whatever at home. We want to help parents get deeper than that, digging into the racism a child may have experienced. Preparing parents to fight for their kids.” 

Becoming a multiracial family, particularly through foster care and adoption, is a process. It involves building a support network that mirrors the family, especially when children are in transracial foster or adoptive placements. It’s paramount for those children to have support networks immediately available to them that mirror their identities, including their racial and ethnic identities.

We know cultural fluency is an important skill for adoptive and foster parents to have, because adopted youth have told us so. “The stuff we talk about is not just stuff we decide is important,” says Sarah. “It’s from adults who were adopted who have spoken about what makes a positive or negative difference in their development, in their sense of self. When children are growing up, having parents who believe them when they say they’ve experienced racism is so crucial.” 

It may seem like a straightforward task, but the training around this issue is complex and shifts frequently, as our understanding of these issues deepen. “It's trauma-informed care in a lot of ways,” says Sarah. “[Transracial adoptive/foster placement training] stretches a lot of people. We all come to this work with our own perspectives and life experiences. Seeing these issues through a new lens takes time. Slowly moving someone from the model of however they were raised or however they think children should think or act to trauma informed care – it's slow, and it can feel uncomfortable for people.” But it is very possible, and we’ve seen it happen for hundreds of adoptive and foster parents. 

If you want to adopt or foster with Bridges Homeward, or you just have questions about the process, get in touch with us today! Email familyservices@bridgeshomeward.org or call us at 617-876-4210.