Fostering with Your Own Children in Nova Scotia: Shared Parenting and the Jenny Cajolais Bursary

One of the most common questions from families considering foster care in Nova Scotia is whether having biological children in the home disqualifies them or makes the process more complicated. It does neither. Nova Scotia actively approves households with birth children, and the SAFE home study specifically assesses how your family as a whole — including your own kids — is prepared for the experience.

What it does require is honest preparation. Children in care have often experienced trauma, loss, and disrupted attachment. They arrive with needs that affect everyone in the household, not just the adults.

What DCS Assesses in Families with Birth Children

During the SAFE (Structured Analysis Family Evaluation) home study, your placement social worker will interview all household members, including your biological children. The purpose is not to find reasons to disqualify you — it is to ensure that your own children understand what fostering involves and that your household has the flexibility to manage the dynamics that arise.

Specific areas the assessor will explore:

Your children's understanding and consent. Children who are not consulted or prepared for a foster placement often develop resentment, particularly if the foster child requires disproportionate attention during a difficult period. Assessors want to see that your birth children have been included in age-appropriate conversations about what fostering means and what to expect.

Bedroom arrangements. The CFSA regulations require dedicated bedroom space for each foster child: 70 sq ft minimum for a single occupancy room, 60 sq ft per child in a shared room. If you have two birth children sharing a bedroom that does not meet the square footage requirements, a foster child cannot be placed in that room. Your existing children will not be displaced for a foster placement.

Sibling dynamics. If you have birth children who have experienced bullying, learning difficulties, or other vulnerabilities, the assessor will think carefully about how a foster child with behavioural challenges might affect them. This is not a disqualifier, but it informs the type of placements your household is matched to.

Shared Parenting and Family Time

"Shared parenting" refers to the model Nova Scotia uses to keep foster parents, birth parents, and children connected during a placement. It is not optional — it is a core expectation that the PRIDE training (nine sessions, 27 hours) addresses directly in Session 5.

In practice, shared parenting means:

• Family Time visits. Birth parents have a legal right to contact with their children during a placement, unless a court has specifically restricted this. The frequency and format of visits is documented in the Service Plan. Some visits are supervised by DCS; others may occur at your home or a neutral community space.
• Facilitating, not just tolerating, contact. Your role is not merely to permit contact but to actively support the child's relationship with their birth family. This includes preparing the child emotionally before visits, receiving them calmly after, and communicating with DCS about how the child responds.
• Co-parenting with birth parents where safe. For placements aimed at reunification, you may be asked to share information about the child's routines, preferences, and developmental progress with birth parents — essentially modeling parenting for families who are working to improve.

Your biological children will witness this process. They may observe you welcoming visits from a child's parent whose choices led to the child needing care. This is worth discussing with them directly rather than hoping it will not raise questions.

Birth Parent Visits: Practical Logistics

Birth parent visits take place on a schedule established in the Service Plan. In Halifax and Dartmouth, visits often occur at DCS district offices. In rural areas, they may happen at community centres or at your home, depending on the safety assessment.

As a foster parent, you will typically transport the child to and from visits. The $0.5932 per kilometre mileage reimbursement applies to this travel when it exceeds routine local transport. The $50 monthly mileage auto-payment covers routine transportation; document long-distance or frequent travel for additional reimbursement.

Children often return from Family Time visits emotionally activated — excited, sad, confused, or behaviorally dysregulated. This is normal and is addressed in your PRIDE training. Your birth children will observe these patterns. Giving them language to understand why their foster sibling behaves differently after visits is part of preparing your household.

The Jenny Cajolais Memorial Bursary

The Jenny Cajolais Memorial Bursary is a financial award administered by the Federation of Foster Families of Nova Scotia to support the biological and adopted children of foster parents. It is named for a foster parent who recognized the specific sacrifices that birth children make when a family chooses to foster.

The bursary acknowledges that birth children in foster families share their home, their parents' time, their emotional space, and sometimes their possessions with children they did not choose to live with. When a particularly difficult placement consumes the family, birth children often absorb the secondary stress. The bursary is a modest but meaningful recognition of that contribution.

Details about eligibility criteria and application process are available through the Federation of Foster Families of Nova Scotia at (902) 424-3071 or through fosterfamilies.ns.ca.

If you have birth children and want to frame the fostering conversation with them in a way that acknowledges their role — rather than positioning them as passive recipients of a decision you made — the bursary is a tangible way to show them that the system has considered them too.

Preparing Your Biological Children for a Foster Placement

Before your first placement arrives:

• Have an age-appropriate conversation about why children need foster care, without sharing identifying details about specific children you expect to receive
• Discuss what will stay the same (routines, family time, their bedroom) and what may change (adult attention distribution, household noise levels)
• Identify a trusted adult outside the household — a grandparent, teacher, or family friend — who your birth children can talk to during difficult periods
• Make clear that they can come to you with concerns about the placement without fear that they will damage the foster child by doing so

The PRIDE training does not comprehensively cover birth children preparation — that is an acknowledged gap. The Nova Scotia Foster Care Guide includes a section specifically on preparing your existing family for a foster placement, including how to manage the period immediately after a child's arrival and the adjustment that follows a child leaving.

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