All About Me Ice Breakers and Fostering Relationships in Visitation (FRV)

Children & Family Services utilizes Icebreaker Meetings to provide Birth Families and Resource Families the opportunity to share details about their home and family traditions. Every child has individual likes and dislikes, fears, hopes, and dreams. Icebreakers give Birth Families and Resource Families a chance to talk about the child’s needs and personality. It has been shown that when there is contact between Birth Families and Resource Families, children:

• Have more stable placement
• Experience better emotional development
• Are more successful in school
• Return home sooner

Please review the following tools to learn more about All About Me Icebreakers. These tools have been created to help you prepare for participating in All About Me Ice Breaker meetings.

• “All About Me” Ice Breaker Tips for Parents
• “All About Me” Ice Breaker Tips for Resource Families
• Co-Parenting Ways To Work Together
• All About Me Ice Breakers – Child
• All About My Child Ice Breakers – Infants (0-1)
• All About My Child Ice Breakers – Children (1-17)
• All About the Resource Family Ice Breakers -Resource Family

• Todo Acerca de Mi Hijo(a) – Infantes (0-1)
• Todo Acerca mi Niño – Niños (1-17)
• Acerca de Mi – Niño
• Todo acerda de la familia de apoyo
• Maneras de trabajar juntos en la co-crianza
• Consejos Rompehielos de “Todo Acerca de Mi” para Familias de Apoyo
• Consejos Rompehielos de “Todo Acerca de Mi” para Padres

Visits between birth parents and children recently placed in foster care can often be stressful for families and go poorly. The goal of the “Fostering Relationships in Visitation” model is to help visits between children, foster parents, and birth parents be more comfortable, supportive and less awkward. Specifically, the program hopes to:

• Strengthen the relationship between foster/resource parents and birth parents
• Help parents to have a successful visit and feel less rejected by their children, which encourages repeated visitation
• Support foster/resource and birth parents to “follow their child’s lead” to encourage play based engagement and connection with their children
• Provide supportive training and coaching to birth parents to assist in rebuilding attachment with their child

Families selected for FRV: 

• Families agree to participate in the program and may opt out of the program.
• Families will be offered an Ice Breaker meeting prior to the start of the visitation program to enable them to meet each other and discuss the child’s needs and enhance communication.
• Foster/resource parents will receive training about ways to support the birth parent during the visitation and encourage parents as they follow the child’s lead.
• Foster/resource parents will attend visits at a CFS office with birth parents and children.
• After each visit, the foster/resource parent and birth parent will fill out a brief questionnaire and will receive phone calls from the social worker to discuss the visit.
• Birth parents will arrive prior to the start of each of the visits to meet with a Field Base Case Aid Mentor and receive training on following the child’s lead, connecting with their child, and managing challenges in the visit.