Quick Tips for Caregivers October 2025

Understanding the Mental Health Needs of Foster Children and Youth

If you are outside and it starts to rain…you will get wet. This is not the beginning of a song or a rhyme. It is just the truth of rain and the impact it has on you. Another example is when you eat toxic food and your body rejects it by throwing up. Getting wet or vomiting are not preferable experiences, yet they ARE natural results of unfortunate circumstances.

Youth who have experienced the unfortunate circumstances of losing of their parents, their siblings, their animals, their home, their school, their clothes, their autonomy, and their dreams will also experience unpleasant effects beyond the loss, very often in the form of challenging mental health needs. Children and youth in foster care respond in their own way to these upheavals, and caregivers can best support them by staying attuned to their mental health needs. To learn more, read these tips for supporting foster care mental health from the Up Center, which provides essential behavioral healthcare services to support families.