Resources for when foster and adoptive families face a crisis

God intends that all humans be both anchored in and formed by family. For children, the context of an imperfect but devoted family enables growth in every domain — mind, body, spirit and relationships. 

Similarly, welcoming a child into the care and loving authority that can come through foster care or adoption can powerfully facilitate healing from prior harm, neglect or loss. Post-adoption research bears this out, demonstrating the long-term healing and growth that often occur when a child in need of a family is permanently brought into one. 

Many churches and organizations have developed robust pathways for families as they embark on the foster care or adoption journey. 

This often includes significant training before welcoming a child into their home, ongoing learning to understand the unique challenges they may face and guidance on parenting in the early stages. There are also helpful models that enable churches and communities to come alongside families with practical support — meals, help with household tasks, child care and prayer. Many churches have sought to make church services more accessible to families, where challenging behaviors and unique needs might otherwise make attendance feel impossible. 

These and other efforts have made a significant difference in the lives of foster and adoptive families. They have undoubtedly strengthened and even held together families along the way, while also nudging many others to choose foster care or adoption for their own families. 

When challenges become more complex

Still, in recent years, many families have experienced ongoing challenges in their foster or adoptive journey. 

Children may struggle with anxiety or depression, aggressive or risky behaviors, substance misuse, or other significant difficulties. Some of these struggles reflect broader declines in youth well-being throughout Western nations, while others may be amplified by factors surrounding foster care and adoption. 

Parents may feel that they have tried everything — including the parenting tools they had been given at the beginning of their journey, along with substantial professional help. Difficult family patterns may emerge, placing strain on marriages and causing distress throughout the household. As strain and depletion mount, parents can become increasingly isolated. 

Here again, many churches and Christian organizations have taken action. Wraparound support can offer critical practical help and relational care. At times, benevolence or special foster care and adoption ministry funds can help when out-of-home care or other professional services are needed. 

Yet these situations can be difficult to navigate wisely. Therapy, medication, emergency care and residential options may each have potential value, but each also comes with real limitations and risks. 

All of this can make the vital call to walk alongside families through crisis feel overwhelming for churches and organizations. Ministry leaders often desire to help in even deeper ways, but are unsure how to do so wisely and practically. 

The outsized opportunity for the Christian community

Yet, it is precisely in a season of crisis that the Christian community can play an outsized role for good in a family’s life. 

This can come in numerous ways:

• Anchoring a family in the stability of the larger community of the people of God and the rhythms and care of that community;
• Helping them lift their eyes to God and recognize His presence even amid suffering and darkness;
• Extending prayer, encouragement and the Word of God into their lives for nourishment and support; and
• Supporting parents in cultivating sturdy patterns for day-to-day life in the home that can help them withstand the tumult that comes their way. 

Again, professional help and specialized interventions may be of value for a time in the lives of foster and adoptive families. But it is the people of God within churches and ministries who can come alongside them and extend the balm every human needs: healthy and enduring relationships with one another and with our Maker. 

Turn-key resources for supporting families through crisis 

Over the past several years, CAFO has been working with families and leaders across the US and beyond to identify what is most essential to better support churches and organizations as they seek to walk alongside families in crisis. 

After listening to the experiences of parents, adoptees, former foster youth and church and organizational leaders — and exploring the best existing research — I wrote When There Is Crisis: A Handbook for Christian Foster & Adoptive Families Facing Serious Struggle. The book addresses the day-to-day complexities families may face, anchoring them in a sturdy Christian understanding of suffering and what God may intend within it in our lives. 

This book offers families and those who support them practical steps and principles as they journey through great difficulty, along with reminders of what is most true even amid distress, perplexing behavior and uncertainty. But I believed even more could be done to help churches and organizations engage with struggling families over time. 

To this end, I partnered with my colleague Jason Johson of CAFO’s Pure Religion Project to produce the When There Is Crisis Study Guide, equipping churches and organizations to walk with families through their struggles. 

Designed to be used alongside the full handbook, the study guide offers parents reflection, discussion and application prompts, as well as an online hub of further resources. Rather than leaving families to absorb content, the study guide invites them to slow down and prayerfully consider — within a group, as couples or individually — what these ideas mean for their specific family as they seek to cultivate growth and healing over time.

Together, these resources can help families and those walking with them gain a deeper understanding of what the season they are in may be for, discern a path forward in the midst of crisis and cultivate patterns that support healing, health and growth beyond the crisis itself. 

A means for growth as disciples of Jesus 

Finally, while these resources address a particular area of serious challenge, they are structured around an essential need of every Christian: to grow more deeply as disciples of Jesus in community with others. Foster and adoptive families may face distressing circumstances that profoundly impact their homes. But through all of this, the invitation to grow as a follower of Jesus remains. 

In this sense, our deepest hope is to encourage families — and those who support them — to practice looking to God, entrusting all to Him and learning from Jesus how to live day to day. May this be so in the lives of families facing crisis, and in all of our lives as those who have decided to follow Jesus. 

– Rachel Medefind is the director of the Institute for Family-Centered Healing & Health. 

Get the When There Is Crisis Study Guide today.

Purchase the study guide alongside When There is Crisis to help foster and adoptive parents navigate seasons of serious struggle, and get access to an additional online hub of resources to go even deeper.