Reunification, Life Books, and Permanency Planning in NWT Foster Care

The child in your home for six months is going home. You've built a relationship, established routines, kept the connection to their family and community alive as best you could — and now the case worker tells you reunification is happening in three weeks. How you handle the next three weeks, and the transition that follows, matters for the child's long-term stability in ways that extend well beyond your last day as their caregiver.

Reunification is the intended goal of most short-term placements in NWT foster care. Understanding the process — and your role in supporting it — is part of what it means to be a professional foster parent.

What Reunification Means in the NWT Context

The NWT Child and Family Services Act is explicit that the first goal of any placement is to support the conditions for safe family reunification where this is possible and in the child's best interests. Reunification is not an afterthought — it is the primary permanency goal in most cases.

For foster parents in the NWT, this means that your role from day one of a short-term placement includes:

• Maintaining the child's connection to their biological family through facilitated contact (phone calls, visits coordinated by the case worker)
• Actively supporting rather than undermining the child's identity as a member of their family
• Avoiding inadvertently building a competing attachment narrative — the child is with you temporarily, and helping them understand that their family relationship is continuing, not being replaced, is part of your job
• Documenting the child's progress in a way that informs the reunification case plan

In the NWT's Indigenous context, reunification often involves not just returning a child to their biological parents, but returning them to their extended family network and their home community. A child who was placed in Yellowknife from a Sahtu community is reunified not just with parents, but with language, land, and extended kin.

The Foster Parent's Role in Reunification

Foster parents are not neutral parties in the reunification process. Your observations carry weight, and your cooperation with the process is expected. Specifically:

• Sharing information honestly: The case worker will ask you how the child is doing, what behavioral changes you've observed, and what your assessment of the child's readiness for transition is. Honest, specific observations — not filtered through your feelings about the reunification plan — are what the case plan requires
• Preparing the child: Depending on the child's age, helping them understand and emotionally prepare for the return home is part of your care responsibilities. This includes acknowledging any mixed feelings the child may have — excitement about going home alongside grief about leaving your household — without suppressing either
• Supporting a gradual transition where possible: Where the permanency plan allows, transitions involving extended contact visits, overnight stays, and a phased return home produce better outcomes than abrupt moves. Advocate for a gradual transition if you believe it is in the child's interests, and raise this with the case worker before the final decision is made
• Maintaining connection after the move: In many NWT cases, former foster parents maintain contact with the child and family after reunification. This is encouraged where appropriate — it maintains a continuity of caring adults in the child's life

Life Books: What They Are and How to Build One

A life book is a narrative document — often a physical album, scrapbook, or journal — that records the child's life story during their time in care. It is one of the most powerful tools available to foster parents, and one of the most commonly neglected.

A life book for a child in NWT foster care might include:

• Photographs from their time in your home — daily life, seasons, activities, community events
• Notes about the child's interests, achievements, and growth during the placement
• Information about the communities they belong to — photos of their home community if available, cultural markers, language words they know or are learning
• Letters from you, from family members, from teachers or community figures who were part of their life during this period
• The child's own contributions — drawings, writing, recorded voice notes for younger children

The purpose of a life book is to give the child a coherent narrative of their own life, particularly through periods of disruption. Children in foster care often experience gaps in their life story — they move, records are lost, adults who held their history cycle out of their lives. A life book ensures that the period they spent in your care is documented, affirmed, and theirs.

For Indigenous children returning to their home communities, the life book also serves as a bridge — a record that can be shared with extended family and community members who want to understand where the child has been and what they experienced.

Begin the life book from the child's first days in your home. Retrospective reconstruction works but is less accurate and less rich. Take photos, keep notes, save small mementos with the child's permission.

Support Groups and Peer Support for NWT Foster Parents

Fostering in the NWT — particularly in a remote community — can be deeply isolating. The complexity of the cultural context, the grief of placements ending, the frustration of a system that is stretched thin, and the physical isolation of northern living create a burden that individual families are not designed to carry alone.

Foster Family Coalition of the NWT (FFCNWT)

The FFCNWT is the primary peer support organization for NWT foster families. Resources include:

• A private Facebook Group for licensed NWT foster parents — a peer-to-peer space for sharing experiences, asking questions, and finding solidarity
• Regional support events and information sessions (where in-person gatherings are feasible)
• Advocacy and information resources for families navigating systemic issues

Contact with the FFCNWT is one of the most consistent recommendations from experienced NWT foster parents. The peer knowledge available through the Fostering Facebook Group — from foster parents who have navigated the exact challenges of your region and community type — is often more practically useful than the formal training materials.

Telehealth Support for Remote Foster Parents

For foster parents in fly-in communities or communities without local mental health services, telehealth is increasingly the primary access point for support services. This applies both to therapeutic services for foster children (counseling, assessments) and to support resources for foster parents themselves.

The NTHSSA's mental health services include telehealth delivery to remote communities. Foster parents experiencing burnout, secondary trauma, or the grief of multiple placement endings can access counseling through the territorial mental health services via video conference.

Jordan's Principle can fund telehealth services for Indigenous foster children who need specialized support that is not available locally. Telehealth-delivered occupational therapy, speech and language pathology, and mental health counseling have all been funded through Jordan's Principle for NWT children in care.

Cultural Support Resources

For non-Indigenous foster parents caring for Indigenous children, cultural liaisons connected to Indigenous governing bodies (the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, TCSA, the relevant band council) can provide guidance and cultural support. These are not formal therapy resources — they are connections to community knowledge that help non-Indigenous caregivers understand and support the child's cultural identity.

Ask your social worker to make these connections explicitly if they are not offered. A cultural liaison who visits your home, helps plan culturally appropriate activities, and maintains the child's community connection is a resource the system has an obligation to provide, not an optional extra.

What Happens When Reunification Fails

Not all reunifications succeed. A child may return home and then re-enter care weeks or months later. This is painful — for the child, for the biological family, and often for the foster family who prepared carefully for a transition that then reversed.

If a child returns to your home after a failed reunification, the care plan typically shifts toward a different permanency pathway — long-term foster care, kinship placement with extended family, or in some cases adoption. The child's needs are typically more complex after a failed reunification, and additional therapeutic and cultural supports may be required.

Foster parents who have maintained relationship continuity — who stayed in contact with the child and family after the first reunification — are often the most effective caregivers for children who return to care after a failed return home. That continuity is a form of stability that the system cannot manufacture but that foster parents can offer.

For a full picture of permanency planning, support resources, and the FFCNWT's services, the Northwest Territories Foster Care Guide covers these alongside the practical steps of becoming a licensed foster parent in the territory.

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