Foster Carers

The Lives of Foster Carers analyzes the contradictions, conflicts, and ambiguities experienced by foster carers arising from the inter-penetrations of public bureaucracy and private family life. Topics covered include: social policy pertinent to childcare the history of foster care service available literature on the experience of foster carers public versus private domains in foster care motivations and roles of foster carers how foster carers perceive themselves and their foster children. Based on a wide range of literature and in-depth interviews with forty-six foster carers, this book provides a valuable insight into the concerns, processes and experiences of foster carers in the UK. Jargon free and accessible, it will appeal to foster carers, practitioners, students and academics in social care, youth work and childcare as well as policy makers in children’s services.

The Lives of Foster Carers analyzes the contradictions, conflicts, and ambiguities experienced by foster carers arising from the inter-penetrations of public bureaucracy and private family life. Topics covered include: social policy pertinent to childcare the history of foster care service available literature on the experience of foster carers public versus private domains in foster care motivations and roles of foster carers how foster carers perceive themselves and their foster children. Based on a wide range of literature and in-depth interviews with forty-six foster carers, this book provides a valuable insight into the concerns, processes and experiences of foster carers in the UK. Jargon free and accessible, it will appeal to foster carers, practitioners, students and academics in social care, youth work and childcare as well as policy makers in children’s services.

Assessing prospective adoptive parents, foster carers, kinship carers and special guardians is an extremely complex task, and one that happens within a pressurized time frame. Currently, assessments draw substantially on interviews, which can generate a lot of information but little analysis to enable professionals to establish a meaningful understanding of parenting capacity. Children with histories of trauma, loss and hurt need to join families in which parents exhibit the ability to be good at relationships, are able to manage their own stress and bond with the child in their care. Now fully updated and expanded to cover the assessment of kinship carers and special guardians, this book combines the latest findings from neuroscience with research on what makes good assessments and provides guidance and tools for making thorough, analytical and effective assessments. With contributions from leading experts including Dan Hughes, Jonathan Baylin, Kim Golding and Julie Selwyn, it will provide you with the information you need to ensure the best possible chance of placement success.

Working with children in foster care is a demanding and rigorous aspect of social work practice. Difficult decisions in fast-moving and often complex situations have to be made, and for students and practitioners alike, there is a vast array of legislation, law and social policy to understand. This book is written to help social workers and social work students get to grips with the complexity of foster care. The child is placed at the heart of the text and there are substantial chapters on law, policy frameworks and the overreaching theoretical and research evidence to support good practice. There is also a strong focus on practical skills such as empathy and relationship-based practice. This is an essential text for experienced social workers or those currently in training.

Researchers, practitioners, journalists and politicians increasingly recognise that foster care throughout the world is in a state of crisis. There are more and more children needing care and, as residential alternatives dry up, more of these children are being assigned to foster families. This book reports the major findings of a two-year longitudinal study of 235 such children who entered the foster care system in Southern Australia between 1998 and 1999. As well as examining the changing policy context of children's services, the book documents the psychosocial outcomes for these children, their feedback on their experiences of care, and the views of their social workers and carers. In the process, the book examines some cherished beliefs about foster care policy and sheds new light on them. The research reveals that while most children do quite well in foster care up to the two-year point, there is a worrying amount of placement instability at a time when the concentration of emotionally troubled children in care is increasing throughout the western world. Although, surprisingly, placement instability does not appear to produce psychosocial impairment for a period of up to eight months in care, it has an extreme effect on children who are moved from placement to placement because no carer will tolerate their behaviour. These children are consigned to a life of distribution and emotional upheaval because of the lack of alternative forms of care. Another unexpected finding of the research is that increasing the rate of parental contact achieves little or nothing in relation to the likelihood of family reunification. As child welfare increasingly enters a world of research-based practice, Children in Foster Care provides some much needed hard evidence of how foster care policy and practice can be improved.

How can professionals work together with foster carers to create stable and therapeutic foster placements? Team Parenting for Children in Foster Care describes a unique model of supporting children in care which involves foster carers and professionals working together in the best interests of the child. This book lays out the key principles of Team Parenting - to meet the needs of troubled young people in an integrated way and incorporate therapy within a wider team of social workers, therapists, psychologists and foster carers - as well as the theory behind it and interventions used. It details how the approach contributes to the recovery of looked after children and each chapter includes examples that illustrates how Team Parenting works in practice. Team Parenting for Children in Foster Care includes ideas for systems and individual practice that will inform and improve foster carers' and professionals' work in any setting.

This volume compares international systems, trends and outcomes in foster care today. Each chapter concludes with a critical commentary by one of the contributors, bringing a cross-national perspective to the issues affecting children and young people in care. The book offers new ideas about how foster care could be delivered in order to become more effective. --