My job title is Social Service Aide and I do monitored visits between foster youth and their biological parents, grandparents and/or other family members.

I want to share with you my recent experience supervising a sibling visit. There are two teen girls (16 years old) and a 7 year old boy who were removed from their home due to general neglect. The kids had visits with their biological mom at first, but bio mom stopped coming to the visits. Now there is just a sibling visit.

The visit for these siblings is very meaningful. They love each other and the two girls care so much for their little brother. Unfortunately,  they live in separate homes. One of the girls is in a group home, her sister is in our agency, and the little boy is in a different foster family agency.

The girls were very interested in the art workshop. We did Take a Break, Self-Regulate which is a workshop where you create dice out of paper to show all the ways you want to take a break throughout your day. Although the time to do a workshop during the supervised visit is limited (I can use 10-15 minutes of the visit), the kids’ participation exceeded my expectations. As I guided them through the workshop process, I discovered the sweetness in them and their need for love and attention.

They really liked how the dice turned out. I gave them some ideas of how to use the dice on a daily basis. They said “Wow! This is cool!” and “We want to do more like this on our visits.” I told them that we would definitely do more art workshops. 

Since then, I’ve seen the kids’ behavior improving. Especially the teens girls, they are more open to talk and show kindness to others.