Many youth in foster care have never had Valentine’s Day cards to share with classmates and friends on Valentine’s Day. This can be an embarrassing experience and lead to additional stress and trauma for a child during the Valentine’s season. CASA volunteers have a unique opportunity to guide youth in care to experience holidays through a new lens of love, support, and encouragement.
Schools often provide supplies for younger children to make ONE Valentine’s Day card for a parent, but youth in care often have multiple people who have helped in caring for them and they don’t want to choose just ONE person to give their special handmade card to. Foster youth may still have one or both biological parents involved, siblings who they visits with, grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins who have been more involved in caretaking than the parents, and the members of the foster family, some or all of whom a youth would like to give a special Valentine’s Day card to. It is interesting to think that a simple Valentine’s Day card can create so many loyalty conflicts for a child, but children in foster care often have to face these types of all or nothing choices and this can lead to short-term and long-term loyalty conflicts for them. However, the good news is that CASA volunteers are the perfect support person to help a youth avoid these conflicts!