Abstract
One of the concerns of the journal’s editorial board is the dearth of new research into UK foster care. Adoption has benefited from several sizeable studies and there have been numerous inquiries into specific problems faced by looked after children, such as their education and mental health. But there does not seem to be much new on fostering since the studies conducted at York University earlier in this century.
This imbalance is reflected in the topics of articles appearing in Adoption & Fostering. Only 16 of the last 56 childcare papers have the term foster care in their title compared with 27 for adoption (many others are relevant to all looked after and/or separated children). Moreover, most of them are based on small-scale, qualitative exercises where a group of people discuss their experiences and chart emerging themes.
This is in sharp contrast to 2005 when the York and other studies were sufficient to inform a comprehensive review. They looked at the recruitment and motivation of carers, the expressed needs and wishes of the children and adults and the factors associated with placement success. They also made a theoretical contribution by encouraging the ecological and systemic view of children and families that was embryonic at the time.
The findings of all this work were collated in Ian Sinclair’s (2005) book Fostering Now: Messages from research. This not only provided a reference for reliable information on every issue imaginable but also encouraged a flexible perception of foster care, seeing it less as a monolith and more as a variety of arrangements appropriate for diverse groups of children. It could be adapted to help in almost every situation, thus challenging ‘for or against’ or ‘specific applicability’ opinions.
Ian’s overview was discussed in the review article ‘Time for a change’ (2005) where Michael Little praised the work for reflecting new thinking in child development and identifying the good and bad effects of interventions. But he also expressed concern that the findings were too reliant on service populations, i.e. children who were fostered rather than on comparisons between them and similar children who were not. He also regretted the lack of longitudinal evidence and the scant attention paid to structural factors like poverty and family breakdown known to increase the risk of care admissions. Little drew a parallel between surfing instructors, who study the sport as a technique, and oceanographers who chart the currents that make it possible. He wanted Sinclair’s book to be seen not as a sacred text but as ‘a starting point for discussion that will lead to, first, alternative ways of thinking about and delivering services for children with significant impairments for their development, and, second, reflections on the research base and approaches to dissemination that might be needed to effect such a change’ (p. 20).
So did anything happen or did the system just bumble on?
Move on 12 years and two new overviews appear, Key Issues in Fostering: Capacity, working conditions and fostering agencies (House of Commons Library, 2017) and The Fostering System in England: Evidence review (Department for Education, 2017).
The first of these is a 14-page House of Commons briefing paper that looks at carers' employment status, professionalisation, relations between fostering providers, profit-making, commissioning and consultation with local authorities and, as its title implies, the current situation. The second is a 270-page DfE report that covers almost every aspect of foster care and draws on recent research and promising innovations. There are sections on the children (their changing profile, increasingly complex needs, attachment difficulties and use of social media); the foster carers (their multi-skilled task, challenges posed by children’s emotional and behavioural difficulties, intrusive vetting procedures, need for training and support, and moves towards professionalisation); and the system (recruitment shortfalls, a growing independent sector, poor commissioning, rising costs, longer stays, placement instability, out-of-area settings, nebulous matching criteria, exposure to abuse allegations, difficulties in facilitating children’s sibling contacts and family reunification, and involving birth fathers in their work). Finally, there is the thorny question of how to assess outcomes and interpret the evidence to decide whether or not fostering has helped.
The report concludes that the biggest challenge to fostering is ‘how to secure the future recruitment and retention of enough high-quality foster carers’ (p. 213) and closes by discussing three ‘wicked issues’ (wicked in terms of their endurance and intractability) that threaten the system: children’s increasingly complex problems, the quality of social work support offered to all those involved and issues associated with the outsourcing of services.
While these new publications certainly provide a welcome opportunity to keep up to date with research and challenging issues, two things are striking. One is how much more limited the research base is than in Sinclair’s day – which means that answers to key questions remain frustratingly tentative – and, recalling the surfing and oceanography analogy, the extent to which the focus is on activities above the water line.