Episode 255: Processing Your Emotions After a Placement Disruption (w/ Kamrie Smith)
Release Date: 11/18/2024
Episode 270: Recovering from Addiction to Achieve Reunification (w/ Jacob Jackson)
The Forgotten Podcast
There are many requirements that a biological parent must meet in order to reunify with their children. While these requirements are necessary to ensure that children are being reunited with parents who can provide a safe and stable environment, many parents struggle to overcome the circumstances that led to their children being placed in foster care in the first place. In the state of Illinois, Just as children and foster parents need a supportive community, biological parents working toward reunification need a strong, steady network around them too. One such parent is Jacob...
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Episode 269: Opening Your Heart and Home to Those in Need (w/ Sarah Hott)
The Forgotten Podcast
Foster care is both rewarding and challenging. It’s happy at times and sad at others; it brings hard days as well as beautiful moments. If you are in the foster care community, you’ve likely seen (or experienced) this firsthand. But what do we do when we come to the end of ourselves? How do we respond when we feel called to open our homes again to those in need—yet find ourselves unsure if our hearts are ready to face the joys and the pain that foster care can bring? Our guest for this episode knows this tension well. Sarah Hott’s journey through fostering, adopting, and parenting has...
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Episode 268: Building Compassion for Those Struggling with Addiction (w/ Christina Dent)
The Forgotten Podcast
Substance use is a major factor in foster care cases; , more than half of the children who entered care under age 5 did so because of parental drug use. Addiction is an issue that runs parallel to the foster care community, and it’s a struggle that agency workers and foster parents often witness firsthand in the lives of the families they serve. For those of us who have never battled with addiction, it can be easy to think we have nothing in common with parents whose substance use results in their children being removed from their care. However, my guest today is here to help us see...
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Episode 267: Beauty Woven in the Brokenness (w/ Austin Ludwig)
The Forgotten Podcast
Trigger Warning: We want to let our listeners know that this episode includes mentions of physical abuse. If you are sensitive to this topic, we recommend you listen with caution. Trauma is one of the hardest challenges to navigate in life. Whether it’s impacting you or someone you love, it can be easy to wish that trauma could be erased in an instant. But our latest guest’s powerful story reminds us that healing doesn’t happen with the snap of a finger. It takes the steady presence of others, the patience to water seeds we can’t yet see growing, and the courage to keep seeking...
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Episode 266: Advocating for Whole Family Care (w/ Esther Sherrard)
The Forgotten Podcast
The child welfare system is not perfect. Not only is it subject to the types of challenges all government programs can face—such as a lack of funding, policy gaps, and inefficiencies—it’s also very overloaded. As a result, many biological parents don’t receive the best resources to help them navigate their circumstances, and often, they are confused about how to access the resources that are available. Here at The Forgotten Initiative, we’re committed to advocating for the best interests of children and families while ensuring that the laws and procedures designed to...
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Episode 265: Walking Through the Heartache of "Blocked Care" (w/ Eric & Diana Powell)
The Forgotten Podcast
Like so many families, Eric and Diana Powell entered into adoption with the best intentions. After their first international adoption from Thailand, they quickly started the paperwork for their second, knowing that the process is often long and fraught with delays. What they couldn’t know is that the next few years of their adoption journey would include physical aggression, episodes of emotional dysregulation, marriage tension, a phenomenon known as “blocked care”, and an overwhelming sense of isolation. During this challenging period, they often didn’t know where to turn next or what...
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Episode 264: The Reality of a Caseworker’s Role (w/ Brittni Hodges)
The Forgotten Podcast
Foster care caseworkers often feel forgotten, isolated, and alone. From managing stressful workloads to coping with secondary trauma and sometimes facing frustration from families in crisis, it’s not hard to understand why caseworker turnover is so high. But here at The Forgotten Initiative, we believe well-supported caseworkers will more effectively serve children, leading to better outcomes for everyone. Our guest for this episode is here to give us an inside look at the kinds of struggles caseworkers may be experiencing in your community and how both individuals and churches can come...
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Episode 263: Learning How to Serve the Foster Care Community (w/ April Hobbs)
The Forgotten Podcast
How much do you know about the foster care community where you live? Many people—both individuals and organizations like churches—want to support their vulnerable neighbors. But few are aware of the many practical ways they can help the children, biological families, foster families, and agency workers who make up their local foster care communities. When our latest guest discovered the overwhelming needs of her local foster care community, she was passionate about getting her local church involved. But when she first set out to make this a reality, her mission turned out to be harder than...
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Episode 262: Hope for Healing from Adverse Childhood Experiences (w/ Angela Paganelli)
The Forgotten Podcast
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) can affect children from any background, but those in foster care are especially vulnerable. There are that have been identified—ranging from abuse to neglect to household dysfunction. All of them have the potential to negatively impact future outcomes for a child. Our latest guest, Angela Paganelli, is a former foster youth who experienced all ten ACEs. After the tragic loss of her mother at the age of 13, Angela spent her teenage years in foster care and institutional settings. These formative experiences shaped her passion for supporting children...
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Episode 261: Helping Children Develop Positive Relationships with Food (w/ Madison Tyler)
The Forgotten Podcast
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 13.5% of U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2023. Unfortunately, food-related trauma is a common challenge for many children who have entered the foster care system. Whether it’s an aversion to a particular type of food, fear that there won’t be enough food, or a tendency to overeat and hoard food, there are many behaviors a child may exhibit as a result of their past experiences. When these behaviors occur, it’s important to meet them with curiosity and kindness. Madison Tyler, a foster and adoptive parent who has been...
info_outlineWhen you decide to become a foster parent, you are asked a wide range of questions about what kind of placements you are willing to accept. What ages will you take? What ages won’t you take? Are there any special needs you will or won’t be able to accommodate? What about sibling groups?
Even when your agency is doing their best to reach out to you about children that fit your criteria, the reality is that sometimes all of the information about a child is simply not known. They may not know the specific behaviors a child presents, every piece of their history, or additional challenges that you may face. There are times where, despite everyone’s best intentions, a placement needs to be disrupted, which can be a decision filled with guilt, shame, and deep heartache.
My guest today has firsthand experience navigating a placement disruption and all the emotions that come along with it. Kamrie Smith is a mom to three biological children and a current foster mom to one. In total, she and her husband have fostered 21 children over the years. She is a founding committee member of Foster Montana, an organization that provides support to children entering foster care and the families who say “yes” to them.
In this episode, you’ll hear why it can be challenging to navigate a placement that feels like it isn’t going well, how to navigate the emotional aftermath of a disruption, how to make peace with the difficult decision of accepting or denying a potential placement, and more.
Find resources mentioned and more in the show notes for this episode: https://theforgotteninitiative.org/kamrie-smith-255/