A student with experience in the Texas foster care system reflects on the challenges of the holiday season.
December 2024
By Anonymous
Ever wonder how kids in the system of Child Protective Services and foster care celebrate holidays like Christmas and New Years? These are all family gatherings, a time to spend with those we love most. They’re also times many of us take for granted. Many kids in the system are forced to spend these holidays away from their loved ones and with a different family. Some kids might not even get the chance to celebrate these holidays with a family at all. So how do they celebrate their holidays?
Do kids in these systems/situations celebrate those holidays?
Not everyone in the system has an opportunity to celebrate those holidays if the placement they’re put in doesn’t celebrate these holidays. However some kids might get the chance to experience holidays full of love and warmth with their new families that was not previously an option. KAC counselor Nicole Fernandez explained, “I feel like there’s a lot of mixed emotions that go into it. I don’t think there’s exactly one emotion that describes each kiddo.”
Something that many caseworkers do to make these times cheerful for the kids in these seemingly tricky situations is having the child make a list of what they want so they are able to get it for them and drop it off at their placement. They try their best to get everything on the list but sometimes it’s difficult as they only have limited resources and there are so many kids in the foster system, it can be hard granting each and every wish.
Do kids get to see their families during these holidays?
Some children in the foster system might be able to see their families, but it depends on what stage they’re at in their case or what was the reason why they got taken away from their home originally.
In my case, it was up to my foster mother whether she was able to do the drive all the way from Dallas to Austin for me to spend the holidays with my family, but other situations can be different. The biggest contributing factor comes from the kids’ lawyer and their CPS caseworker because it doesn’t always have to be what stage they’re at in their case.
How the kid feels and if they really want to go see the family also plays a role because sometimes the child may not want to visit the home family. If the child has supervised visits can also affect how the holidays with family are spent. At the end of the day, it’s a very difficult question because each kid’s story is different.
How do kids feel during these holidays?
In these situations, kids can feel a variety of emotions. There is not one universal answer because everybody can feel differently about it. Some kids may feel sad because they miss their families or some kids may feel happy because it’s the first time they’re celebrating these types of holidays because in their original home, it wasn’t celebrated this way.
As Fernandez said, “I can imagine there’s a lot of mixed emotions. Maybe for some, the holidays with their families felt really put together, they felt happy. Holidays were like a highlight of what they didn’t have right so it really looks different for each kiddo that’s in the system. Some kiddos are like I’m really happy, I feel safer and more secure in this placement right some people don’t have that luxury right some people their placement does not feel safer than like with their parents.”
In conclusion, for kids that are in CPS and in the foster care system sometimes it can be really hard on holidays. Sometimes it can be really happy and really easy and for others, the exact opposite. There’s not an exact emotion we can describe but for sure, holidays are celebrated differently for kids and that’s something people really don’t shed light on. Some might celebrate Christmas for the first time, some kids might finally get the gifts that they were never given the opportunity to have previously, some might spend the holidays longing to return home.
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