'I made some mistakes . . . but I love them dearly' the views of parents of children in informal kinship care

In-depth semi-structured interviews with 30 parents of children living with relatives in informal kinship care arrangements revealed the parents' views of the reasons for the informal kinship care arrangements, quality of their relationships with the children and their caregivers, their current and future roles in their children's lives, feelings experienced when with and away from the children, positive and negative aspects of kinship care, future goals and dreams for their children, and their assessments of their own strengths and challenges. Results of these interviews suggest several implications for social work practice and research.     

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.     

Emotional kinship care and neutral non‐kinship care — the struggle between discourses

In this paper, social workers' ideas of kinship care and non‐kinship care as foster placement alternatives for vulnerable children are analysed and discussed. The study is based on group interviews with Swedish social workers, using a discourse analytic approach. The interviews took two vignettes of children who needed an immediate and long‐term placement because one of the parents had killed the other parent, as their point of departure. Domestic violence is a common social problem across countries, and controversies about placement alternatives become even more apparent when discussing lethal violence. The analysis revealed three main discourses: ‘emotional kinship care’, ‘neutral non‐kinship care’ and ‘a real family’. The emotional kinship care discourse also revealed two competing sub‐discourses: ‘emotions as glue that binds’ and ‘emotions as obscuring a child perspective’, displaying a struggle concerning the advantages and risks that social workers connected to kinship care. In this paper, the results and their implications for vulnerable children are discussed.     

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.     

Traditional kinship foster care in northern Ghana: the experiences and views of children, carers and adults in Tamale

Surveys were employed to explore the experiences of children in care and their carers about traditional fostering. They also examined the perspectives of randomly selected adults in the community about the practice of traditional foster care in the Tamale area of northern Ghana. The 74 participants responded to closed- and open-ended interview questions about traditional foster care. Frequencies and thematic grouping of qualitative responses showed that the need to keep family ties alive was the key reason for placement of children with family and kin. Majority of the children expressed satisfaction with living in foster care, even though they had experienced physical and emotional abuse and intimidation. Although most carers were not formally employed and had little personal income, they were positive about having the care role, but faced challenges in providing for many children in a difficult economic situation. The report highlights the role of reciprocity, altruistic and socio-cultural factors in quality of care, and the potential for the traditional kinship foster care to provide suitable avenues of placement for children as recommended by the Ghana child rights law. It also identifies the need for education for carers around children's needs and Ghana's child rights law.     

The nature of relationships between orphans and their kinship carers in Botswana

Generations of parents lost to AIDS and other causes have created a vacuum of care for the orphaned children they leave behind. This crisis has resulted in rapid changes in caregiving and family life, with extended family members, having to care for orphaned children. As a result of high numbers of vulnerable orphaned children residing with kinship carers, and the fundamental importance of the relationship between carers and orphaned children, we need to understand more about these relationships. This paper explores the nature of orphaned children–kinship carer relationships in Botswana. Interview guides were used to collect data from 15 caregivers and 15 orphaned children. The results indicate that the nature of relationships between orphaned children and caregivers is influenced by the way the parties communicate, how adolescents behave and the competing responsibilities of caregivers. Lastly, the paper recommends how positive relationships can be developed and nurtured between orphaned children and their caregivers in an African setting.     

Strengthening kinship families: scoping the provision of respite care in Australia

Kinship care is the fastest growing form of out‐of‐home care in Australia, as it is in many other countries. The Victorian Government's response has been to establish 18 programmes across the state to provide support to kinship families. The scoping project described here, based on interviews with key programme staff, explores the experiences of the new programmes in providing support, specifically respite care, to kinship families. It has produced a picture, based on qualitative and quantitative data, of how respite care is understood, the perceived respite needs of kinship families, how services are organized and provided, identified barriers to families accessing support, the effect of respite provision and what constitutes optimal practice. The findings establish a basis for a best practice model of service provision for this increasingly significant family type.     

Becoming involved in raising a relative's child: reasons, caregiver motivations and pathways to informal kinship care

Interviews with 207 informal kinship caregivers describe a dynamic process that influences how children come to live with a relative other than their parent. This process involves three overlapping and often simultaneously occurring factors: (1) the reasons the children's parents were unable to care for them; (2) the caregiver's motivation for assuming responsibility for the child; and (3) the pathways or routes that children took to the caregiver's home. Understanding these factors and their mutual and simultaneous influence is important as we shape policies, programs and interventions to support families as they consider whether to care for a relative's child and once they assume this responsibility.     

Kinship care in the UK: using census data to estimate the extent of formal and informal care by relatives

Until recently, little was known about kinship care in the UK. Research has begun to illuminate the circumstances which lead to children being cared for by relatives, and the stresses and strains experienced by carers. However, most UK research has only considered ‘looked‐after’ children placed with formal approved kinship foster carers, although this group forms the smallest proportion of children in kinship arrangements. In this paper, we use microdata from the 2001 UK Population Census to examine the characteristics of kinship carers and children, and demonstrate that most children in kinship care are growing up in informal unregulated arrangements. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

‘It's about the whole family’: family contact for children in kinship care

Contact with family for children in care is identified as a right under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, such contact often presents challenges because of the protective concerns that have led to care arrangements being made. The Family Links: Kinship Care and Family Contact research study explored the nature and extent of family contact in kinship care, with a particular focus on the circumstances that create positive contact and foster family relationships. Findings included evidence of a large proportion of parental contact that was negatively affecting children's well‐being, and was sometimes unsafe. By contrast, the frequent contact that children were enjoying with their siblings and wider family was reported to be mostly positive and supportive. Kinship carers described a range of services needed to facilitate more positive parental contact and to enable children to keep contact with significant family members.     

The social support in kinship foster care: a way to enhance resilience

This paper analyses how social support enhances family resilience in kinship foster families by involving the families in an educational group programme. Sixty‐two kinship foster families from Spain participated in the research. The data were collected before the programme (interviews) and after the programme (interviews and focus groups), and these were analysed by content analysis with the programme Atlas.ti. The results show that the factors that contribute most to the development of family resilience are as follows: (i) feeling able to look for solutions when facing problems; (ii) an increase of their network of formal support; (iii) being able to offer support to other foster families; and (iv) feeling that the support they give to parents' foster children is socially recognized.     

A tangled web: parental contact with children in kinship care

Contact between parents and children in care is a contested area. Parental contact is recognized to be important, yet may present protective issues; in the kinship care environment, it brings the particular challenges of complex family relationships. Seeking the parents' perspective in a child protection context is difficult and therefore under‐researched. This paper describes a nested study within an Australian research project on family contact in kinship care in which the perspectives of 18 mothers and 2 fathers were sought via in‐depth interviews. Mothers and fathers described strong feelings of disempowerment in the context both of their family and the child protection system. The relationship between parent and caregiver emerged as a significant issue. All of the parents wished to remain in contact with their children in a meaningful way, whether or not they were likely to resume their children's care; however, contact arrangements presented many difficulties for them. Mothers articulated the need for services that are more empowering and respectful, rather than oriented towards them as failed parents. In order to build appropriate models of support and intervention, we argue for a more inclusive conceptual frame for family life that gives greater recognition to the role of non‐custodial parents in the lives of their children.     

Nonfamilial kinship carers—Who are they and what support do they need to nurture children?

There is a growing body of literature about kinship care in the Western world; however, much of it focuses on grandparent care. A lesser known aspect of kinship care is the care of children by nonrelatives known to the child or their family. What little research exists about this group suggests that such placements are less stable than familial kinship care. This article reports a research study in Victoria, Australia, that explored nonfamilial kinship care through analysis of administrative data, interviews with young people and carers, and focus groups with kinship care support workers. It emerged that current administrative databases are not yet able to reliably identify the carer relationship, and thus the extent of such care arrangements cannot accurately be determined. Interviews and focus groups revealed that nonfamilial kinship care is diverse and qualitatively different from familial kinship care, bearing some similarities to foster care yet managed very differently. It is suggested that policymakers need to pay more attention to conceptualizing nonfamilial kinship care within kinship care policy frameworks and that greater attention is needed to the individual support needs of children in such placements and their carers.     

The nature and prevalence of kinship care: Focus on young kinship carers

Young kinship carers tend to be overlooked in kinship care policy and practice. This Australian research project explored the prevalence of kinship care households in Australia, with a particular focus on households headed by young kinship carers. Census data were utilized to explore the number of kinship care households across the carer age spectrum and some of their characteristics, including households with Indigenous carers and carers with a culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) identity. Characteristics of households headed by carers aged 16–30 years were explored in some detail, and comparisons made with young parents. The data pointed to particular challenges for young kinship carers in relation to post‐secondary education, employment and income security. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

An investigation of the needs of grandparents who are raising grandchildren

Evidence suggests that children in out‐of‐home care function better when placed in kinship compared with foster care. Less is known about the functioning of children in the unique form of kinship care where grandparents are caring full‐time for their grandchildren in informal care arrangements. As grandparent carers are increasingly taking on this role, it is timely to investigate the functioning of the children in this form of care and the characteristics of the grandparents themselves. We compared the functioning of children in the two types of care. We also investigated carer characteristics, including the relationship between child functioning, social support and daily hassles on carer stress. One hundred fourteen cares and 180 children were assessed on a range of demographic and clinical measures. Children in grandparent care were displaying better behavioural and adaptive functioning than children living with foster carers. Grandparent carers reported higher levels of distress in the carer role. Predictors of carer stress included severity of child behaviour problems and daily hassles. Both group of carers and the children in their care would benefit from increased support from treatment services.     

‘It's just like another home,just another family,so it's nae different’ Children's voices in kinship care: a research study about the experience of children in kinship care in Scotland

Growing acknowledgement of the importance of the role of kinship carers in caring and supporting children and young people in Scotland has led to a burgeoning of research on this topic. However, most research has tended to focus on the role of kinship carers. A significant gap has been direct studies into the views and experiences of children and young people living with relatives or friends. This paper seeks to address this by drawing on the findings from a small‐scale qualitative collaborative research project with 12 children and young people living in informal and formal kinship care in the Northeast of Scotland. The literature on foster and kinship care is reviewed and key themes identified. The qualitative research data is outlined employing a thematic analysis approach. The key findings are analysed with a view to the potential implications for policy and practice. The paper concludes with proposals for potential future research.     

Informal kin caregivers raising children left behind in rural China: Experiences' feelings' and support

The well‐being of children in informal kinship care and their caregivers is a growing concern globally. This study explored the lived experiences of 23 kin caregivers raising children left behind in rural Northeast China while their migrant parents worked and lived in cities. The findings show that the expected authority and responsibility caregivers carry sometimes conflict with their social role of being children's grandparents. Caregivers' feelings about and understandings of these roles are shaped through their social interactions in local communities. In view of their situation and caregivers' self‐conscious attitudes towards utilizing local resources' future formal service provision and social support should take caregivers' viewpoints into account. These views are embedded in and shaped by their rural living context and relationships with community members who influence caregivers' perceptions and child rearing practices.     

Factors associated with family reunification for children in foster care

In this paper, we analyse reunification processes from family foster care, both kinship and non‐kinship, and the variables associated with them in a Spanish sample. Data collection was carried out after a review of child protection and foster care files, and those responsible for the cases were also consulted. The cases studied were closed, which made it possible to assess the final outcome of the fostering. We found that only one‐fifth of the children return to their birth family after the fostering, and that those in non‐kinship are less likely to do so. Seven factors were associated with family reunification processes: age of the child, kinship care with family co‐operation, drug dependence in parents, neglect due to alcoholism, foster care under voluntary arrangement with visits, short‐term fostering with family co‐operation and parental impossibility due to imprisonment. The contribution of these data takes on particular importance given that the Spanish child protection system keeps no official statistics on the development or outcome of its interventions and records even less information on the factors associated with such outcomes.     

Using complexity theory in kinship practice

This reflective discussion draws on data from a collaborative enquiry into kinship or family and friends practice. It introduces perspectives from complexity and chaos theory as a way of re‐examining the challenges of kinship practice. The discussion highlights the enduring challenges for practitioners, not least, managing anxiety and uncertainty, sustaining continuity and containment, becoming experienced and taking account of the complex developmental needs of the children and their families. The discussion particularly raises questions about appropriate settings for practitioners to undertake such a demanding area of child and family social work.