Note to parents up for interviews with the foster care system in Australia: don't mention your stellar parenting.
Although experts on how to be a good interviewee have long said you have to sell yourself, a set of Australian foster parents who were trying to bring home their foster son's biological siblings were denied. The problem? A psychologist said the couple thought they were too special.
The parents description of themselves as "excellent foster parents" denoted "perceptions of omnipotence and specialness," according to Toni Single, a psychologist for the department of community services. Single also considered the couple rude for saying no to a plate of sandwiches. Perhaps they weren't hungry?
There are myriad reasons to deny potential foster parents children, and it is important that social workers take seriously the role of handing kids off to foster parents (in general, I would say they do!). But doesn't this strike you as splitting hairs? This couple has already been deemed good enough to care for their foster son, who has lived in their home since 2002, and his sister, who lived with the family from age eleven until eighteen when she aged out of the system.
So they called themselves "excellent foster parents." Would it have been better if they described themselves as good-for-nothing shitheels? Would that make you hand over two more children?
The sad thing here is that a set of siblings will be housed in separate foster homes rather than kept together. The couple's foster son, in particular, is distraught - he asked that his parents gain custody of his two little brothers. And this isn't the first time Single has taken it upon herself to come up with a wacked out reason for denying foster parents' kids - check out this story my colleague Shannon wrote about her earlier this year.
Would you describe yourself as an "excellent" parent? Do you think that means you've inflated your opinion of yourself?
Image: Center for Family Studies
Related Posts:
