FAQ

Burnout builds when the emotional, physical, and practical demands of caregiving become overwhelming over time — usually not because you aren’t trying hard enough, but because you’ve been trying very hard for a very long time, sometimes without enough support. Signs to watch for include feeling constantly exhausted even after rest, feeling discouraged or hopeless, more frustration or irritability with the child or others, feeling isolated, struggling to keep up your own routines, and guilt about needing time away.

Feeling this way doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong — it’s often a sign of how much you’re investing. Recognising these signs early, and treating them as information rather than personal failure, helps you reach for support before things get more severe. FASD caregiving stacks up demands that ordinary parenting doesn’t, so needing support is a normal part of the journey.

Source: CFS FASD Practice Notes

What you’re describing may be vicarious trauma — the way a child’s trauma can settle into a caregiver who is repeatedly exposed to their stories, experiences, and emotional pain. It isn’t your own trauma, and it isn’t weakness or oversensitivity; it’s what tends to happen when you stay close to another person’s pain for a long time while also doing the practical work of supporting them. With FASD the exposure is often constant — regulation challenges, stories that surface in unguarded moments, appointments that revisit difficult history.

Over time you might notice feeling overwhelmed by the child’s experiences, more anxiety about their safety or future, feeling drained or numb, or trouble separating caregiving concerns from your own life. Naming it is often the first step in working with it rather than being worn down by it. Counselling with someone familiar with trauma and caregiving roles is one of the strategies most worth pursuing, alongside peer support and FASD-aware caregiver networks.

Source: CFS FASD Practice Notes

Self-care here doesn’t need to be elaborate — the most sustaining strategies tend to be small, specific, and repeated. Connect with other caregivers who understand FASD through caregiver groups, FASD networks, or local foster and kinship associations; those peer connections often matter most because they cut isolation and share strategies that actually work for this profile. Take short breaks where you can, keep up supportive friendships outside the caregiving role, and seek professional support like counselling when stress becomes overwhelming — none of that is a sign of failure.

Ask for respite when it’s available; it’s part of how the work stays sustainable, not a luxury. If you’re not sure how to access it, your resource social worker or coordinator can point you toward what’s there. And build a real team around both the child and yourself — teachers, the social worker, FASD key workers, counsellors, mentors, extended family, respite caregivers — so no one person carries the whole weight. Taking care of yourself is part of caring for the child.

Source: CFS FASD Practice Notes

Kinship caregivers often step into the role unexpectedly to support a child within their own family, and while that’s an act of deep love, it carries complex emotions foster caregivers experience differently. You may be holding grief about changes in family relationships or what the family used to be like, worry and sadness about the child’s parents — who may be your sibling, adult child, niece, or nephew — a sense of loss about how the family once functioned, and complicated loyalty as you support the child while maintaining ties with their parents and the wider family. Difficult conversations and boundaries within the family often come with it.

All of this sits alongside the daily work of raising a child with additional needs, and the combination can be heavy. Acknowledging the grief — naming it as grief rather than pushing it aside — is an important step in protecting your well-being. It often helps to connect with peer support or professionals who understand kinship caregiving specifically, where the particular shape of what you’re carrying doesn’t have to be explained from scratch. You’re allowed to advocate strongly for the child while also recognising the struggles their parents face; both can be true at once.

Source: CFS FASD Practice Notes