What's the Difference Between a Public and Private Foster Care Agency? - Weekend Wisdom

Question: For someone who is looking to become a foster parent should they go with a public or a private foster care agency? Which is best?

Resources:

• Choosing a Foster Care Agency
• Becoming a Foster Parent
• Working as a Part of the Foster Care Team

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.
Welcome, everyone, to Weekend Wisdom by Creating a Family. I'm Dawn Davenport, and
Weekend Wisdom is my chance to answer your questions, so send us your questions.
You can send them to info @creatingathamily .org. Today we received a question about
whether someone who is considering being a foster parent should go with a public or
a private foster care agency. Basically they want to know which is best.
So let me start with a warning here. I'm getting ready to make some gross
generalizations. So listen with caution. Keep in mind that there is no uniform
private agency and no uniform public agency. There are differences. There are
phenomenal public agencies and then there are public agencies that really are not
that good. And then there are phenomenal private agencies, and then there are private
agencies that are not that good. I do think some generalizations can be made, but
as with all generalizations, there are exceptions. All right, so I'll list five
points. One, private foster agencies usually, in my opinion, provide better services.
They're more prompt at turning phone calls and emails. They give more personalized
attention. Again, not universal. I happen to know of a couple of really strong
public agencies that would put some private agencies to shame, but as a general
rule, that is what I have seen. Home studies are often completed faster at private
foster agencies. They have less on their caseload, and they may also have tighter
controls on how long a family can wait. The third difference that I see is that
private foster agencies usually provide better post placement support.
They are more attuned to post placement support. Another difference, public agencies
usually cost less than private agencies, although the cost with private agencies is
usually not great at all. And the fifth difference, depending on your county, private
agencies may work with the easier to place children but you need to check with your
county since this is not true across the board. In fact there are some counties or
parishes that do just the opposite where they have private agencies work with the
harder to place kids and then there are certain states where private agencies do it
all. It's a privatized system completely so this is the moot point since your option
is a private agency. I hope this has been helpful. It's terribly general, but I do
think it at least gets to the heart of some of the things that you should be
thinking about. And before you leave, let me let you know about our Jockey Being
Family courses. We call them that because they're sponsored by the Jockey Being
Family Foundation. They are free courses available for you if you are an adoptive
parent, a foster parent, or a Kinship Caregiver, a grandparent raising a grandchild.
We have 12 of them. They can be used for continuing ed if you need continuing ed.
But if you don't need continuing ed, they're just used to make you a better parent.
So check them out at bit .ly /jbfsupport.
That's B -I -T dot L -Y slash J -B -F support. And thank you for listening to this
week's Week in Wisdom. If you liked it, please tell a friend to subscribe, and the
way they would subscribe is they just subscribe to the generalcreatingofamily .org
podcast. Thanks for listening.