Raising a child who has experienced trauma is demanding, intensive work. You are thankful to offer your home as a safe landing place for this child. However, they have challenging behaviors, sleep disruptions, or other struggles. You know you need a break but aren’t sure how to get it.
Whether working through the local child welfare system to provide care for this child or offering care without involving the system, there are ways to get the break you need to refuel and recharge.
What is Respite Care?
Within the Child Welfare System
Every parent or caregiver needs a break occasionally. If you are working with the child welfare system to offer care for this child, you can access respite care. Respite care aims to provide safe, short-term alternative care for kids to help their caregivers avoid burnout. When we say short-term, we mean that the most common respite care is usually over a weekend, but sometimes it is as long as two weeks.
Most commonly, respite care providers are other licensed foster parents within your region’s child welfare system who have also been vetted, trained, and approved for care. An example of this short-term respite care might be a regular date night where caregivers swap childcare duties each month. Other times, it could be a respite caregiver offering weekend care so you can attend a marriage retreat or other refreshing retreat.
Sometimes, respite care providers work within the local foster system solely to provide this short-term temporary care without doing typical fostering. Building connections with respite caregivers in your community can be slow but incredibly beneficial for your mental and emotional health.
Informal Respite Care
If you are not working with the formal child welfare system, you can still find opportunities for respite care. Informal respite care can be a group of parents and caregivers offering each other childcare and a necessary time away to rest.
It’s helpful to create a mutually agreed-upon set of plans and expectations. You can decide together how frequently each caregiver offers childcare and whether it includes overnight care or daytime only. The goal should be a consistent, fair plan that you all can use. Caregivers can count on a break and be available to help others get a break.
Why is Respite Care Necessary?
Children with a history of neglect, prenatal substance exposure, or chaos often have challenging behaviors. They’ve experienced deep hurt and chaos and usually have significant needs.
Now that you are caring for this child, you face a wide range of struggles, such as:
- The child’s challenging behaviors
- The child’s academic struggles or delays
- The child’s emotional or mental health struggles
- Tense or unhealthy relationships between children and parents
- Supporting the child’s parents toward healing
These difficulties are all in addition to the regular load you carry while raising your own family, managing your home, holding down a job, or staying active in your community.
It can quickly get overwhelming. Many caregivers and grandparents forget to care for themselves and are vulnerable to exhaustion or burnout. It’s not uncommon: being in the trenches with a child who needs you often means putting yourself on a back burner. You intend to return to healthy self-care when the crisis passes. However, the problem is, far too often, grandparents and other caregivers rarely return themselves to that front burner.
How Do Caregivers Get Respite Care?
Caseworkers Can Arrange Respite Care.
If you are working with a caseworker for this child’s care, review their materials about how your county or state handles respite care. Remember that each state and county manage child welfare services differently – including respite care.
In many counties, if you need short-term child care, you can contact their caseworker. The caseworker can then coordinate care or give you a list of approved local care options. Some states and counties have a particular staff person, called home finders, to help you. A caseworker will direct you to work with them.
Kinship Caregivers Build Their Own Network.
Other times, foster parents and caregivers have a group of friends, family, or other caregivers who are already approved for short-term care, and they arrange it themselves. They keep the child’s caseworkers in the loop with the details and contact information necessary for their time away.
Respite Care When You Are Not with the Child Welfare System
When you are not involved with the child welfare system, getting regular, safe respite care might be the most challenging part of raising your grandchild. However, it can be done with some thoughtful attention to the relationships you have in your community.
Ask a friend.
Contacting a safe, reliable friend or family member is the most obvious way to get respite care. This might require you to check with the child’s parents – especially if you know they have strong feelings about other family members being involved in the care of their child.
Learn about your state’s services.
In many states, kinship caregivers can access respite care through the Kinship Navigator Program. You can check out this link for more information on North Carolina’s kinship services.
Build a List.
In addition to reaching out to friends or family members for a break, consider asking around for members in your community who regularly offer childcare. Often, single moms, elderly persons, and even college students are looking for ways to serve and earn a little money on the side.
If you can build a list of those folks, mixed in with friends and family, it can be within financial reach to have regular time away to recharge.
Self-Care through Respite Benefits Your Whole Family.
Try to approach the idea of taking a break with the attitude that self-care suits all of you. Committing to regularly scheduled respite can help you be a healthy, rested grandparent or caregiver. Raising this child is honorable and loving work. You deserve to be the best you can be for each other to thrive and heal.
*You might also learn more about respite services from this site. However, your state policies may vary from the general information offered. Child Welfare Information Gateway has a wealth of supportive information like this factsheet to help kinship caregivers.