Grief,loss, and separation: Experiences of birth children of foster carers

Previous research identifies the increased exposure of birth children of foster carers to experiences of separation, grief, and loss due to the transient nature of foster care, but little is known about how birth children manage this loss. This paper reports findings from a qualitative study that examined the retrospective experiences of 15 adult birth children of foster carers (aged between 18 and 28 years) in Ireland. Findings suggest that birth children experience grief and loss when foster children leave their families. They report experiencing a range of emotional responses such as guilt, blame, and sadness. A reluctance to discuss their emotional responses with either their parents or foster care professionals was also reported. Instead, birth children developed strategies to manage the loss, such as distancing themselves from the foster care process. The study highlights the importance of social workers and foster carers explaining to birth children why foster children are leaving and, where possible, maintaining contact between birth children and foster children. Additionally, findings indicate the need for birth children to have safe nonjudgmental spaces to discuss their emotional reactions to loss.     

Child of two worlds: How foster care workers perceive their skills in dealing with worldview differences in foster care

Foster children often encounter worldview differences between their foster family and their birth family, for example, when participating in religious activities and practices. Foster children not only have a right to continuity in upbringing but also consistency in worldview, culture and language. Good co-parenting relationships are important for their identity development. For these reasons, foster care workers are entrusted with the task of supporting the triadic relationship of the foster child, birth parents and foster parents in dealing with worldview differences. Based on in-depth interviews with foster care workers (n = 16) six skills in dealing with worldview differences can be distinguished: (1) basic knowledge of worldviews and identity formation; (2) empathizing with the other; (3) inquisitiveness to discover what is essential for the other; (4) initiating worldview conversations and keeping them going; (5) fostering self-reflection in worldview; and (6) manoeuvring between and monitoring all interests. It is helpful if birth parents are well-informed in advance about the impact of worldview differences and if foster care workers and foster parents are aware of the identity and developmental needs of foster children to explore the worldview of the foster family and the birth family.     

Finding a routine that works: A mixed methods study of foster parents

Although it is well established that daily routines are important for family well‐being, very little research has been done on how foster parents establish and integrate new foster children into family routines. We used a mixed‐methods, cross‐sectional design, focused on qualitative results to explore how foster parents utilize routines. Twenty‐three foster parents were recruited from a private child welfare agency in a large city in the United States. Surveys were administered to obtain demographic information, overall home atmosphere, and the importance and prevalence of different routines, including mealtimes and sleep schedules. Nine foster parents received a semistructured interview with open‐ended questions. Foster parents reported that routines such as bedtimes, mealtimes, chores, and homework were essential to family well‐being. Because both parents and children had to adjust to living together in an intimate family environment, it was important to establish routines quickly. Foster parents modified routines depending on their child's needs. Along with typical family routines, foster parents reported additional tasks, such as visits with biological parents, meetings with caseworkers, and trainings that affected their family schedule. Results imply that training foster care workers and foster parents about routines can engender stability and emotional belonging for children.     

The relationship between foster care families and birth families in a child welfare context: The determining factors

Children placed in foster care families usually continue to see their birth parents in supervised and home visits. These children deal with the fact that they belonged to two families in a context where the relationship between the two families is sometimes complex and tense. Based on 45 semi‐structured interviews conducted with foster care families and kinship foster care families, the present study examines the relationship between foster care parents and birth parents in a placement context, and focuses on the factors affecting the nature and quality of this relationship. The results showed that the quality of the relationship dynamics varies according to the following: how well and how often the parent–child visits took place, the birth parents' characteristics, and the foster carers' attitudes. The results also showed that placements in kinship foster care families were more likely to result in conflict and tension between the two parties than placements in regular foster care families.     

Congruence and incongruence in the perception of ‘family’ among foster parents,birth parents and their adolescent (foster) children

Over recent decades, listening to children's voices and viewing children as competent actors has gathered momentum in research as well as in practice. Acknowledging children's perspectives requires sensitive listeners who are willing, deliberately and as realistically as possible, to reconstruct children's ways of seeing. In our study, based in Norway, we investigated the views of 22 adolescents in long‐term foster care and 15 of their birth parents and 21 of their foster parents. Using Q methodology, we explored congruence and incongruence in the perception of ‘family’ among foster parents, birth parents and their adolescent (foster) children. We found three family perspectives among the adolescents. Within two of these perspectives, there seem to be more congruent understandings of the children's perspectives among the parent groups. We discuss some main implications in light of these findings. In Norway, as in many other countries, the policy of child welfare is that children first and foremost should grow up with their birth family. When out‐of‐home placements are necessary, a basic principle is that children should remain in contact with their birth family.     

Contact between birth parents and children in kinship care in a sample from Spain

Within the context of kinship care, the main objectives of this work are to study the characteristics of contact between foster children and their birth parents, and their relationship with key variables of fostering, the children and their kinship caregivers. The sample included 189 children from Spain and their kinship families. A semi‐structured placement interview and two scales relating to the child–caregiver relationship and child's psychological adjustment were used with the kinship families. The results revealed a significant percentage of foster children who had no family contact. Various visit types, frequencies and durations were described. Kinship care with contact, compared with placements without contact, was frequently characterized by the absence of professional supervision, and an affectionate child–caregiver relationship; moreover, children with contact were perceived to have fewer serious behaviour and socio‐emotional problems and a greater probability of family reunification. The regression analysis showed that the main predictors for how caregivers assessed contact were the children's emotional reaction during visits and the quality of the relationship between the kinship families and the birth parents. These results suggest the need for further research about contact, which will certainly have a major impact on professional intervention with these families.     

Inclusive foster care: How foster parents support cultural and relational connections for Indigenous children

How do foster parents support the relational and cultural connections of Indigenous children in care? The answer matters; the well‐being of Indigenous children depends on these connections. At one of Canada's largest Indigenous child welfare agencies, we implemented inclusive foster care, an approach requiring foster parents to engage with the family, community, and cultural life of the child for whom they care. Fifteen years later, we present findings from a thematic analysis of interviews with 13 foster parents who participated in a mixed methods study exploring inclusive foster care. We discuss foster parent strategies to support the child's family relationships: setting clear boundaries, rolling with inconsistency, and understanding the family's (hi)stories. Strategies to strengthen cultural connectedness include visiting traditional territory, using personal initiative and Indigenous knowledge, and engaging in school‐based and “multi‐purpose” cultural opportunities. Drawing on foster parent stories of success, we propose ways for social workers, foster parents, and policymakers to address the cultural and relational disruption that characterizes the experience of Indigenous children in care in colonial settler societies.     

Accomplishing irony: Socializing foster children into peer culture

Parents indirectly influence their children's peer interactions by implicit socialization and directly by interference. They influence their (young) children's doings by supervising their contacts with friends, monitoring where they go, and facilitating their meetings with friends at home. Adolescents' growing orientation to peers is often at the cost of direct contact with their parents. Potentially, conversations with adolescent children become significant moments for parents to collect information about their children's social lives, preparing them for the challenges of their preadult social life. We studied conversations between in state‐created family homes amongst foster parents (FPs) and out‐of‐home‐placed adolescents, to see how FPs prepare foster adolescents to deal with the dynamics of peer culture, specifically in mocking practices. We are interested in the pedagogical role of FPs in these practices. We find that peer culture behavior is expressed in the context of family homes. Rather than preparing adolescents for peer culture indirectly by discussing possible, or hypothetical, situations, FPs react directly to peer culture expressions at the dinner table. In their approach, FPs demonstrate that peer culture membership is not just an interactional competence but also a teachable issue.     

Sons and daughters of foster carers and the impact of fostering on their everyday life

The paper presents results from a study of sons and daughters of foster carers, and the impact of fostering on their lives. Children and young people participated in focus groups and discussion groups, and 684 answered a questionnaire. Eight were interviewed in‐depth. The results from the study showed that sons and daughters of foster carers were highly involved in the fostering assignment. Most children and young people valued their relationship with foster children, but even though relations to foster children were good, fostering could imply complicated changes of everyday life. Sons and daughters of foster carers may have to cope with conflicts connected to behavioural disorders of foster children, and they gained knowledge about foster children’s problematic lives. Fostering also implied contact with natural parents of foster children. Such contact could challenge children’s and young people’s’ perception of adequate parenthood. For some respondents it was hard to become aware of the dysfunctional parenting, abuse and/or neglect to which foster children might have been exposed. The results of the study provided evidence of the need to acknowledge the contribution to fostering made by sons and daughters of foster carers, and also to recognize the impact fostering may have on their lives.     

Intergenerational pathways leading to foster care placement of foster care alumni's children

This study examined a path model that postulated intergenerational relationships between biological parent psychosocial functioning and foster care alumni mental health, economic status and social support; and from these to the likelihood of children of foster care alumni being placed in foster care. The sample included 742 adults who spent time in foster care as children with a private foster care agency and who reported having at least one biological child. A full pathway was found between poorer father's functioning to greater alumni depression, which was in turn associated with negative social support, and then a greater likelihood of child out‐of‐home placement. Other parent to alumni paths were that poorer father functioning was associated with alumni anxiety and post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and poorer mother's mental health was associated with PTSD; however, anxiety and PTSD were not implicated as precursors of foster care placement of the child. Findings support the need for increased practice and policy support to address the mental health needs of parents of children in or at risk of foster care, as well as the children themselves, as family history may have a lasting influence on quality of life, even when children are raised apart from biological parents.     

Carers and Professionals' Perspectives on Foster Care Outcomes: The Role of Contact

This study investigates the association between the contact of children or young people in care with their family, and the foster care placement evaluation (positive or negative) in Portugal. According to the perspectives of foster carers and service professionals' perceptions regarding children and young people's reactions, during and after the visits, are measured. Utilizing a quantitative approach, two fostering services teams and 140 foster carers completed questionnaires, which had 212 children in common. Results indicated that despite the importance of continued contact, especially for children and their parents, it was not determined to be essential to long-term placement. On one hand, there was the perception that a high percentage of children expressed positive reactions during and after the visit, while on the other hand, this didn't influence the perception of placement success. This study also showed significant differences between foster carers' and the professionals' perceptions on several dimensions of foster care, especially the children's reactions during visits. These differences need to be further analyzed in future research and the outcomes used to help improve contact management.     

We care about care: advice by children in care for children in care,foster parents and child welfare workers about the transition into foster care

Twenty children in foster care, ages 8 to 15 years, provided advice to children in care, foster parents and child welfare workers about ways to assist service delivery during the transition into foster care. The children discussed the importance of tending to experiences such as foster home expectations, the importance of time and information, the new foster/parent–child relationship, coping with stress, the ability to be engaged in decision‐making, the benefits of foster care and the need to build a trusting and personal relationship between children in care and their caregivers. The importance of listening to children's experiences of the transition into foster care and incorporating their advice into future research, policy and practice will be discussed.     

Children in permanent foster care in Sweden

The Swedish child welfare system has no permanency planning as we know it from, for example, the United States and Great Britain. Regardless of whether the child is placed in foster care with or without the parents’ consent, the law requires semi-annual reviews and there is no time limit set on reunion. Nevertheless, there are foster children who remain in the foster home throughout the whole of childhood, on terms similar to permanent foster care or adoption. This paper concerns a selection of findings from a research project entitled ‘Is there a difference in being a foster child?’. Foster children aged 10–11 were interviewed three times and the children’s perspective was focused on, complemented by the perspective of their foster parent(s). When interviewed about their relationship to their natural family as well as to the foster family, and about having a sense of family belonging and expectations for the future, 11 of the 22 children perceived their stay in the foster home as permanent and regarded themselves as belonging only to the foster family, although all of the children had contact with their birth parents. The study concerns the children’s views as well as those of the foster parents. The perception of permanency in the absence of a legal option of permanency is discussed.     

Searching for effective interventions for foster children under stress: a meta‐analysis

Foster children experience a lot of stress because of their life histories and changes in their family circumstances, such as foster care placement. It is important that foster parents recognize the early signs of stress in foster children and learn how to act in a non‐threatening and understanding manner. Family‐based interventions may help in this. In this paper, we report on a meta‐analysis of studies (n= 19) of the effectiveness of such interventions. All studies used a pre‐test/post‐test design. Both problem behaviour in foster children and the parenting skills of foster parents improved by 30%; however, none of the interventions were specifically intended to help young children (<4 years) to cope with stress. The importance of interventions for young foster children is discussed, as well as the necessary elements these interventions should include.     

An investigation of foster parent training needs

The training foster parents receive in America, pass the initial training required to certify them to take children into their homes, is not standardized. The Foster Care Independence Act of 1999 (H.R. 3443) requires prospective foster parents to be trained, but it provides only general guidelines for the training content. The training offered differs by state. This research examines what a group of foster parents attending a state foster parent association conference felt they needed in the area of training, to help them fulfil their role. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected. Foster parents were surveyed and ranked their training needs based on 10 pre‐identified needs. They also responded to an open‐ended question about their training needs. Foster parents ranked training to enhance their ability to help the child adjust in their homes and manage challenging behaviours as most needed. The qualitative data suggested that foster parents have additional needs and some are not related to training, such as the need for respite services.     

Supporting foster and kinship carers to promote the mental health of children

The majority of children and young people removed from the care of their parents by the state of Victoria, Australia, reside in foster or kinship care. These children have experienced a broad range of adverse conditions and are up to 4 times more likely to experience problems with mental health than their mainstream peers. This paper draws on the perspectives of foster and kinship carers, describing the disconnection between their role as mental health advocates and their interest in early intervention in a field which is dominated by crisis and the historic marginalisation of foster and kinship carers. Thirty‐one foster and kinship carers across greater metropolitan Melbourne, Australia, contributed to this study through interviews and focus groups. Participants demonstrated a practical understanding of mental health and an ability to identify a range of conditions that have an adverse impact on the mental health of children and young people in their care. The paper concludes that there is a lack of systemic support and even a range of barriers that affect the capacity of foster and kinship carers to promote the mental health and well‐being of the children and young people in their care.     

“She was accused of colluding with the mother”; the training and support needs of parent‐and‐child foster carers: A qualitative study

Parent‐and‐child foster placements are used to accommodate parents with their children, either when the mother is a looked‐after child or as a setting for a parenting assessment. Despite this being a specialized role with significant potential for affecting outcomes for disadvantaged families, there is currently a lack of accessible learning opportunities for foster carers on the physical and mental well‐being of women with complex needs such as a history of domestic abuse, substance abuse, perinatal mental ill‐health, or having a learning disability. Parent‐and‐child carers experience some unique stresses and value the support of others with similar experiences; this kind of peer support is currently largely absent. This qualitative study has used ten focus groups with foster carers, eight interviews with mothers, and nine interviews with supervising social workers, to inform the development of an online learning resource and a social media‐based peer support network for parent‐and‐child foster carers.     

Family contact in foster care in Portugal. The views of children in foster care and other key actors

This is a pilot study on the sensitive issue of how children and young people experience family contact in foster care, and the views of key adults in their lives on the same issue. There is a special focus on the children's experiences, opinions, and feelings. The study is a response to the relative scarcity of literature on family contact based on the experiences of children and adults in caring roles. This is a qualitative and exploratory study, with a sample of 10 children and young people in care in the district of Porto, aiming to identify key issues and areas for further examination. The results allow us to conclude that the possibility of maintaining contact is positively evaluated. However, perspectives on the relationships involved, and on the reactions to and difficulties associated with visits, revealed considerable disagreement among the actors. A possible set of implications drawn from the findings pointed out to the importance of developing a monitored cooperation that improves communication processes in order to take into account the children's and young people's views in the decision‐making process; and to develop more attentive and open working relationships with parents throughout the foster care placement.