FROM FOSTER CARE TO FOSTERING CARE: The Need for Community

Using an interpretive ethnographic framework, we investigate how being in a caring community benefits foster children and their families during a time of crisis. Through (re)telling the stories of the untimely death of Carl Connor, a parent of four foster children, we examine the community of Hope Meadows as the site where the activities of caring occurred. Care as a set of relational and moral practices is presented, and we describe how care is facilitated by the purpose as well as the physical and social dimensions of Hope Meadows. The stories of Carl Connor's death provide a foundation for a gendered theory of moral community.     

From despair to care: A journey of the old and the young at Hope Meadows

Using interpretive ethnographic methods, we examine how living at Hope Meadows benefits both foster children and senior citizens. We (re)tell the stories of some of the residents focusing on the everyday and special signs of care that were given and received. It is these signs of care that serve as the foundation for meaningful relationships between the seniors and the children. We identify social capital and story telling as key elements that contribute to the construction and maintenance of this caring community. Through these mutual caring relationships, the old and the young help each other journey from despair to care.     

Intergenerational Programming for Foster-Adoptive Families

Abstract

Generations of Hope serves foster and adoptive children, their adoptive families and older adults through an innovative program that is breaking new ground in the development of caring intergenerational communities. It was created in 1993 as a non-profit social service agency designed to improve the service delivery and policies of the child welfare system; it ended up helping not only foster and adopted children but senior citizens as well. This paper examines critical social issues facing both foster children and senior citizens in the United States and how this program created a neighborhood that combines several generations of kin-like support to meet the needs of these vulnerable groups. We describe how the Generations of Hope model brings together in tangible ways critical shifts in perspective regarding foster care and gerontology. The lessons we have learned speak to research, policy making and practice.     

Foster fathers performing gender: the negotiation and reproduction of parenting roles in families who foster

ABSTRACT

Foster care research and social work practice tend to focus on how women look after children living in foster care. This focus has limited our understanding of what it is that men do within foster caring families and they are automatically assigned secondary or breadwinning roles. Families who foster involve some form of renegotiation of roles to care for children they foster. While foster caring arrangements are internationally diverse, foster carers often work with social workers. It would therefore seem important for social workers to understand how foster carers negotiate their parenting roles. This paper reports findings from seven main caring foster-fathers who took part in a wider study involving twentythree foster-fathers. The evidence provided by these foster-fathers demonstrate they are highly motivated to care for children and, alongside delivering traditional parenting roles, they negotiate new, non-traditional parenting roles as foster-fathers. These new roles, taken on by foster-fathers, often challenge stereotyped masculinity while they also concurrently enact parenting norms. This study applied Judith Butler’s work on performing gender to foster caring families to theorise on the process whereby foster-fathers negotiate diverse masculinities and continue to reproduce gendered relations in foster caring families.     

Pediatricians and foster children

The poor state of health and health care of foster children is well documented. The cure lies in the hands of the agencies that administer the foster care system and pay for medical services, and in those of the physicians who provide that care. This study suggests that much of the problem may be solvable. Adequate numbers of pediatricians in Connecticut seem to be committed to caring for foster children, but major impediments remain, including inadequate reimbursement for both primary and specialty health services. The institution of a medical passport can make needed information available and help to establish and promote standards of care. Pediatricians appear willing to take a leadership role in assisting other agencies in developing programs to improve the care of these children; despite the problems in providing medical care to foster children, most pediatricians view it as part of their responsibility to the community and to all children.     

By private arrangement? safeguarding the welfare of private foster children

A key characteristic of debates on caring for children has been the distinction made between the public and the private or formal and informal sector of care. In particular, the impact on adult relationships of the material, emotional and moral dimensions of this division has been highlighted. What are the implications for children, however, of regarding the child care arrangements made by adults as private affairs between parent and provider? This paper reviews research on childminding registration to assess whether a similar system would regulate private fostering arrangements and thereby protect a hitherto neglected group of vulnerable children, private foster children.     

Alcohol and drug abuse among young adults who grew up in substitute care — Findings from a Swedish national cohort study

To what extent substitute long term care modifies intergenerational transmission of substance abuse has rarely been investigated. Using register data, we followed a national cohort born 1973–1985 consisting of 1012 national adoptees, 2408 former children from long term foster care, 348/846 environmental siblings of adoptees/foster children, and 952,935 majority population peers, from their 15th birthday to age 27–35. Using Cox regression, we calculated hazard ratios (HR) for hospital care and criminality associated with illicit drug/alcohol abuse, with adjustments for socio-demographic indicators of caring families, and substance abuse in caring and birth parents.     

Caring for orphans and vulnerable children in a context of poverty and cultural Transition: A case study of a group foster homes program in Burkina Faso

This paper analyses the functional dynamic of a group foster homes-based program in Burkina Faso and its potential to meet the developmental needs of children. Data were collected through field observations, interviews, and questionnaires. Findings suggest that this community-based program combines institutional care and extended family networks. Orphaned, abandoned, and vulnerable children were brought together in foster homes, each headed by a non-relative woman and supported by the program operator. The program guaranteed the basic needs of children as specified by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The nutritional status that is indicative of the overall well-being in emergency seems to be better than the average children of Burkina Faso, suggesting that basic vital needs of children were met. Familial ties are also developed between each family member. Children have the opportunity to interact with community, therefore preparing them for social life. Despite some limitations, mainly due to the lack of psychological support, the program achieves its objectives of caring for children and provides a familial environment for orphans. Therefore, many organizations caring for orphans in Africa through institutional settings might learn from this experience in terms of management style, parenting, and connections with relatives and community.     

Fictions and Facts about Parents and Parenting Older First-Time Entrants to Foster Care

Knowledge about the parents of older first-time entrants into foster care is embedded in fictions created by media images, anecdotal stories of professionals in the child welfare system, as well as reports and observations of youths who have experienced foster care. Even though there are caring and effective nonrelatives who are foster parents, the public perception of non-relative foster parents is sometimes quite negative. In order to separate some of the facts from some of the fictions about the parents/caregivers of older first-time entrants to foster care, this article will describe the parents and relative caregivers (grandparents and others) of older first-time entrants to foster care in an urban public welfare agency by examining maltreatment data.     

Advertising morality: maintaining moral worth in a stigmatized profession

Although a great deal of literature has looked at how individuals respond to stigma, far less has been written about how professional groups address challenges to their self-perception as abiding by clear moral standards. In this paper, we ask how professional group members maintain a positive self-perception in the face of moral stigma. Drawing on pragmatic and cultural sociology, we claim that professional communities hold narratives that link various aspects of the work their members perform with specific understanding of the common good. These narratives allow professionals to maintain a shared view of their work as benefitting society and to perceive themselves as moral individuals. As a case study, we focus on the advertising industry, which has long been stigmatized as complicit in exploitative capitalist mechanisms and cultural degradation. We draw on nine total months of fieldwork and seventy-four interviews across three US advertising agencies. We find that advertising practitioners use narratives to present their work as contributing to the common good, depicting themselves as moral individuals who care about others in the process. We analyze three prevalent narratives: the account-driven narrative, which links moral virtue to caring for clients; the creative-driven narrative, which ties caring to the production of meaningful advertisements; and the strategic-driven narrative, which sees caring in finding meaningful relationships for consumers and brands.     

Care and community revalued during the COVID‐19 pandemic: A feminist couple perspective

The COVID‐19 pandemic led us to understand and revalue care ethics within our daily lives and communities based on the feminist theory of care ethics. This article is a personal reflection of an academic couple living in Japan as we reflect on our experiences and the challenges encountered in caring for ourselves and our community. We discuss the ideas of care theory mainly: caring‐about and caring‐for, interchangeably in our discussion across the three‐stage categories: Home — A Commonplace; Care Ethics in Community; and Care Ethics for Self. Through these personal narratives, we strive to recognize the struggles of living through the pandemic in a virtually connected world that often disconnects us from self. We foster the idea of embracing care ethics as a starting point at an individual level.     

Family group decision making and disproportionality in foster care: a case study

Research on the disproportionate number of children of color in the child welfare system suggests that we should focus on key decision points such as investigations, substantiations, and placements to understand how experiences of children vary by race and ethnicity. This article describes one community's efforts to use Family Group Decision Making in placement decisions to reduce disproportionality in foster care by diverting children from regular foster care services and keeping them within their extended families.     

Developmentalism and the Rhetoric of Best Interests of the Child

Abstract

The foster care system in Australia has recently recognised the importance of encouraging lesbians and gay men to become foster carers. Whilst this may be seen as an important step towards overcoming social stereotypes that position lesbians and gay men as unfit parents, I propose that foster care public policy in Australia is shaped by a number of key assumptions that effectively exclude lesbian and gay foster parents. In particular, I focus on how the logic of developmentalism [where children are assumed to follow a (hetero)normative developmental pathway] and the rhetoric of best interests of the child (within which a particular moral framework is employed to judge who can and who cannot protect children) work to recenter a normative understanding of families and parenting that encourages lesbians and gay parents to adopt a heterosexual model of parenting.     

Foster care in India: An exploratory survey of the community perceptions and prospects for implementation of foster care in a developing nation: A study in Udaipur,Rajasthan, India

This study was conducted in order to assess the prospects for implementing foster care as an alternative to the dominant system of institutional care available to orphaned and abandoned children in India. 653 families in urban Udaipur participated in a mixed-methods based assessment of receptivity to foster and adoptive care. The majority of those who responded reported receptivity to the idea of foster care as an alternative to institutional care. However, analyses demonstrated that respondents also perceived barriers to implementing systematic foster care, particularly with regard to family recruitment due to problems securing family and community support for participation. The results are discussed in light of governmental calls for non-governmental organization and other stakeholders to institute alternatives to foster and adoptive care. The results of this study have applied significance for organizations and practitioners seeking to implement care alternatives for orphan and abandoned children in India.     

Negotiating a moral identity in the context of later life care

Strategies to maintain independence for older people have received considerable attention as a social policy solution to the financial and social impact of the ageing population. Critical scholars in gerontology have also highlighted the negative consequences of promoting independence in this way. Understandings of independence have profound implications for caring relationships as people age. To investigate the ways that older people talk about caring we interviewed 48 people aged 55-70years. A discourse analysis of these data showed that a dominant discourse of 'independence' was drawn upon to value self-sufficiency and construct dependence on others as burdensome. This construction of care provides a comfortable position for those who can afford to purchase professional care; however, those without resources are unable to accept unpaid help without also accepting a position of dependency. An alternative discourse of 'being there' constructs having others to provide personal care as a virtue and obligations to provide such care as based on family duty and affection. This discourse emphasises connections between people and a moral obligation to care which also creates difficulties for those with fewer material resources. The position for a dependent older subject in these two discourses may seem incompatible but can be reconciled by reframing independence as autonomy. Autonomy for those requiring care alongside a wider recognition of caring as the responsibility of all members of the community rather than with individual family members would support a flexible approach to later life care arrangements.     

Specialized foster care and group home care: Similarities and differences in the characteristics of children in care

Until recently, foster children who presented special medical or behavioral problems were largely served in group care environments. Specialized (or “treatment”) foster care has recently been developed to serve some of these challenging children. Although growing evidence points to the special needs of children in foster care, much is still unknown about how children placed in various out-of-home care settings differ from one another. The growth of specialized foster care as an alternative placement to group care, calls for examination of how children in these settings compare on demographic, educational, health, and behavioral characteristics. A cross-sectional mailed survey was distributed to all group care and specialized foster care agencies in a large state to address topics related to children's characteristics. Comparisons point to two groups of very difficult children, with unique mental health and health needs.     

Facing Death: Buddhist and Western Hospice Approaches

This article draws on ethnographic data to examine how moral person‐hood, emotions, and social relationships are constructed quite differently within two organizations with the similar goal of holistically caring for the dying. The analysis shows how the moral rhetoric and related practices at a mainstream hospice encourage volunteers to esteem a static conception of the self‐as‐character, whereas the Buddhist approach requires volunteers to engage in a process of transcending a self that is continually being worked on. The analysis points to paradoxes in the hospice conceptions of a “good death” and offers critical reflection on the assumption that Western and Buddhist approaches to hospice care are largely equivalent. Organizational, structural, and phenomenological strands of symbolic interactionist thought are drawn on to interpret these findings.     

Family Functioning and Satisfaction of Former Residents of a Non-Therapeutic Residential Care Facility: An Exploratory Study

ABSTRACT

Recently there has been a resurgence in discussions among government policy-makers regarding the use of non-therapeutic residential care as an alternative to kinship and family foster care. If informed decisions are to be made regarding foster care alternatives, evaluation is needed of how children fare in residential care facilities. This study looks at the family relationships and life satisfaction of 76 adults who resided in a residential care facility as children. The overall positive results suggest that the negative reputation of non-therapeutic residential care facilities may not be wholly deserved. The authors hope that this information can assist social workers and policy-makers in making important decisions about the appropriate use of residential care with our country's future population of foster care children.     

Estimating minimum adequate foster care costs for children in the United States

Although foster care homes play a crucial role in providing stable placements to children who enter the child welfare system due to maltreatment, there is currently no federal minimum rate nor standard methodology to establish adequate rates to support foster parents to meet these children's needs. Therefore, it is important to establish a model to estimate the real costs associated with caring for children to serve as a foundation for states to set adequate reimbursement rates. The objectives of this study are to: use the methodology of a 2007 study to establish foster care minimum adequate rates for children (MARC) based on the child's age and geographical location in every state; update the MARC with cost of living adjustments to 2016; examine changes in gaps between the MARC and the current foster care rates; and identify states that have made increases to their reimbursement rates, relative to the MARC over time. Results found that all but four states provide lower foster care reimbursement rates than the adequate costs in 2016. This study recommends that, at the federal level, enhanced precision in operational definitions of care categories could increase consistency in the way that states reimburse foster families. Additionally, findings provide policy suggestions to establish a national methodology standard and increase foster care rates to the level that will meet children's needs. This study will enhance the scant body of literature found on establishing an economic model to estimate foster care costs.