Abstract
Placement breakdown is a frequently occurring phenomenon in the context of out-of-home care. Although research has pointed to the many problems associated with placement instability and breakdown, less is known about foster parents’ experiences. We carried out deep interviews with foster parents to investigate connections between their caring experiences and experiences of placement breakdown. Results of our study demonstrate that breakdown is a complex process rather than a single event – a process that starts in the discrepancy between the statutory obligations of the social services toward the foster home and the foster parents’ perceptions of the kind if information and support they actually receive from the social services. High demands are placed on foster parents’ ability to provide care and offer a loving home to children who have been raised in difficult environments and who have behaviour problems. The road to breakdown also included a lack of knowledge about the child’s needs, insufficient understanding of the placement process, a difficult relationship with the social worker, and a lack of individualized service with the right supports at the right time. Although the placement may have ended in breakdown, foster parents described a continuing relationship between their families and child which was of lasting significance.
Introduction
When children cannot grow up with their parents, society has an overall responsibility for ensuring that they have access to the support and protection they need. In Sweden, this responsibility ultimately falls to the social service system. Every year, thousands of children and young people find themselves placed in out-of-home care. While the overall numbers of children in care have varied over the years, the use of care placements have been a stable part of the child welfare system since its foundation. Placements of children and young people may be in either foster care or institutional settings although most, regardless of age, are placed in foster care settings. Foster care is often seen as the optimal care environment because it is meant to give children an ordinary family life until they either return home or are ready for independent living. How well the system succeeds in this task has long been open to question with research showing that there are serious and frequent problems and adverse outcomes for children who have been placed in public care (Vinnerljung and Sallnäs, 2008).
One problem shared by child welfare systems across the western world is placement breakdown – the unexpected, unplanned and sudden termination of a child’s placement, whether in foster care or in another care arrangement (Unrau, 2007). A review of the literature has shown that placement breakdown is a frequently occurring phenomenon, occurring in between 20–40 percent of placements (Egelund, 2006; Oosterman et al., 2007). Research has also shown a connection between placement breakdown and poorer outcomes for children in both the short and long term. They often experience increased behavioural problems and emotional difficulties (Newton et al., 2000) and have generally poorer long-term prognoses (Vinnerljung and Sallnäs, 2008).
In Swedish child welfare, the child is at the centre of care planning whereas responsibility for the child is shared between the social services, carers and parents (in so-called three-party parenting). If a placement does break down, it impacts not only the child but often also biological parents, social workers, and foster parents. Although studies of placement breakdown are numerous, they have often focused on its frequency, risk factors or causes and consequences to children. Few studies have included foster parents; and when they have, the focus has been on foster parents’ view of children’s problems and not on their own experiences of breakdown (Brown and Bednar, 2006).
To address this knowledge gap, we designed this study to investigate how Swedish foster parents described and understood placement breakdown and the care context in which it occurred. It is part of a larger study including the experiences of foster children, biological parents, and social workers. We sought answers to the following research questions:
How do foster parents describe their reasons for becoming, and their lives as, foster parents? How do they describe the circumstances surrounding children being placed in their care? How do they describe the circumstances surrounding placement breakdown?
A better knowledge of how this phenomenon is experienced in relation to the care process as a whole may help us to better deliver services for the sake of all involved in child welfare placements.
Children in care in Sweden
In Sweden, the state’s responsibility for children is subsidiary to the parents’, as long as parents themselves can give their children a good upbringing (Sundell et al., 2007). Child welfare is, thus, a combination of controlling and family supportive in nature (Wiklund, 2006) and is legislated through the Social Services Act (SoL). The law is goal oriented (Andersson, 2001) and states that the Social Welfare Board should, ‘on the bases of democracy and solidarity… work to ensure that children and youth grow up in a safe environment’ (SoL chapter 5 § 1). Services are to be provided in cooperation with parents and may include the placement of a child in out-of-home care. Parental consent is always required when children are placed outside their homes under the SoL. If the child is aged over 15, the child’s consent is also required. Foster care is considered preferable to residential care and children should, if possible, be placed with a relative or other close adult (Andersson, 2001).
Children and youth may also come into care on a compulsory basis under the Compulsory Care of Young Persons Act (1990: 52) (LVU) if there is substantial risk that the child’s health or development will suffer due to conditions in the home environment or because of the young person’s own behaviour and if care cannot be given on a voluntary basis. When a child receives care under LVU, parents remain legal guardians although their discretionary powers are curtailed. In Sweden, regardless of whether placements occur under the legal mandate of SoL or LVU, when children and young people are placed in out-of-home care, it is regarded as a support – and temporary measure where family preservation remains the guiding principle. Although custody of a child in care for longer than three years can be transferred to the foster parents, this is an option that is rarely exercised (Andersson, 2006).
Placement breakdown
The nature of placement breakdown
The phenomenon of placement breakdown has been studied since the 1960s. Given the poor outcomes associated with placement breakdown, research has focused on identifying risk factors associated with breakdown (Rostill-Brookes et al., 2011) and studies have, to a large extent been based on the examination of social work case files (Egelund et al., 2010; Unrau, 2007). Risk factors have most frequently been connected to the children in part because case files most often have information about children and their parents, leaving other potential risk factors difficult to discover. Swedish and international research on placement breakdown has shown that older children (Smith et al., 2001), the presence of behaviour problems (Newton et al., 2000; Park and Ryan, 2009; Sallnäs et al., 2004; Ward, 2009) and previous moves within the care system (Oosterman et al., 2007; Vinnerljung et al., 2001) are associated with a significantly higher risk of breakdown. Research also indicates that caregivers, social services and biological parents, influence the breakdown process but findings from these studies are not consistent. These approaches in quantitative research risk, as Engelund et al. (2010) explain, positing placement instability as a single event rather than a process and that risk factors for placement breakdown become reduced to qualities within individuals instead of being seen as something that is shaped in the interaction between people and context.
Breakdown and foster parents
Even in qualitative studies of placement breakdown, foster parents often cite children’s behaviour problems as a reason for breakdown. Foster parents describe the safety of the family due to the child’s physically or verbally aggressive behaviour as one reason for placement breakdown (Brown and Bednar, 2006; Gilbertson and Barber, 2003). However, interviews with foster parents have shown that it is not just the child’s behaviour that is an important consideration but rather it is in combination with ‘system failures’ – including a lack of pertinent information about the child prior to placement and a lack of supports to foster families when they asked for help – that placements, which otherwise could be saved, end up in unnecessary breakdown (Gilbertson and Barber, 2003). From foster parents’ perspectives, placement breakdown occurred if the child had needs or behaviours that the foster parents could not meet or manage, if their own health became problematic or if the circumstances of the family changed (Brown and Bednar, 2006). The stress that can come with being a foster parent, for example coping with hyperactivity in a child, difficulties in their relations with the biological parents, and problems in contact with social workers can lead to an increased feeling of stress and thus increase the risk of placement breakdown (Farmer et al., 2005).
Foster parents’ decisions to terminate placements are preceded by a substantial period of weighing alternatives (Wilson et al., 2000) and regardless of the reasons given, placement breakdown is described as a difficult experience, marked by guilt and a sense of failure in trying to make a difference in a child’s life (Rostill-Brookes et al., 2011). Placement breakdown significantly increases the chances that a foster parent will decide to end their role as a foster parent (Wilson et al., 2000).
Methodology
This study is informed by interpretive phenomenology and explores the experiences of the participants from their own perspective but moves from a descriptive level to interpretation (Cederborg and Gumpert, 2010). Our focus is thus on the meaning that our respondents give to events preceding and surrounding placement breakdown rather than on risk factors associated with this phenomenon. In this study, we carried out deep interviews with foster parents to understand how they experienced placement breakdown (phenomenology) and how they make sense of and apply meaning (interpretation) to their experience. The method is based on two aims. The first one tries to understand the participants’ world and describe it with focus on the participants’ experiences of placement breakdown. The second aim is to analyse and interpret these findings in relation to the wider social and cultural context (Larkin et al., 2006) – in this case in the context of social services and the provision of out-of-home care. Our approach is based on our interpretation of placement breakdown as an experience immediately and directly connected to the context of caring in which it occurs.
We recruited a purposive sample of traditional foster families (no previous relationship to the child) to participate in this study. Using the conceptualization of placement breakdown developed by Sallnäs et al. (2004), we have included those placements that end because of a social worker’s displeasure with the placement, the foster parent refuses to continue to provide care, the child runs away or refuses to remain in the placement, or because the parent withdraws consent to placement.
Respondents and procedures
Potential respondents were identified via a network of social workers who work with foster care in seven municipalities. Respondents were contacted through an information letter sent to all foster parents in these municipalities. Those who met the inclusion criteria and who wanted to participate in the study contacted the primary researcher. In total, eight foster parents participated in this study. All respondents had biological children. Respondents’ experiences as foster parents varied from one year to thirty years. The number of children they had looked after varied with two presenting patterns: four foster families had had fewer than five children and four had over ten. All respondents received children placed via municipal social services. Some foster families were so-called specialized foster homes and were formally employed by for-profit care agencies.
Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with foster parents in their homes. Respondents were asked about their thoughts about being foster parents generally and about their experiences of placement breakdown. Those who had experienced more than one placement breakdown could choose themselves which experience to talk about. Interviews ranged from 32 minutes to one hour and 44 minutes. All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Two researchers analysed the interview material and engaged in analytical comparisons. Analysis was assisted using NVivo 8 software. Similarities and differences in respondents’ stories were documented. And, from this information, categories were shaped (Patton, 2002) that were relevant to the studies aims, and were grouped into relevant themes.
Findings
Foster parents’ descriptions depict placement breakdown as a consequence of a long series of events preceding children actually leaving their care. In the text following, we report on this path to placement breakdown beginning with a description and analysis of foster parents’ motivations and then an explication of their mission, the child’s arrival and everyday life in the foster home and ending with foster parents’ depictions of the breakdown and of conditions afterwards.
‘Ordinary family’ motives meet ‘extraordinary’ circumstances
Some respondents contacted social services themselves to become foster parents while others had previous contact with social services and eventually had foster children placed in their homes. Regardless of these different starting points, our respondents described wanting to care for a child, to do a good deed and, most importantly, to offer a family. ‘To be able to help a child. I think we had a stable family to offer, a good environment so (…) our own two girls had grown so they could take care of themselves and it felt like I wanted to give more’. The caring perspective – of wanting to support, protect and nurture a child – was a recurring theme in many descriptions of their views of the purpose of foster care and motives to become foster parents. The terms ‘help’ and ‘save’ were frequently used. ‘The purpose has to be to save, to save many’ or ‘We are a shield; if we aren’t their shield who else is going to be?’ Respondents also described wanting to shape independent, well-functioning citizens. There was also a clear awareness of the importance of the child’s biological parents and of not wanting to split up families. ‘The best thing would be if we would let children have four parents’.
After years of experience, fostering had become a lifestyle for some. ‘We’ve had a lot [of children] over the years. I mean we weren’t expecting it but it has been continuous the whole time’ or, ‘Now so many children and young people have come and gone that it isn’t strange for anyone in the family if a new child arrives. So I think it’s become a lifestyle’.
Becoming foster parents was complicated upon the arrival of a foster child into their families. Arrival was often marked by its acute nature, sudden decisions and a lack of information. The initial placement of a child was often acute and hasty. ‘It just went a day or so, then suddenly they would come here with her. It was extremely dramatic when she arrived because she was screaming and hitting people and we couldn’t ever get her in here’ or ‘They called at 9 o’clock in the morning and she was here by twelve (…) I told them to drive slowly so that I could get the room tidied up and it all went so fast’.
In addition to these quick placements, foster parents describe the problem of not having enough information about the child’s difficulties. ‘But these were completely unknown little people that we had taken in and we clearly had our share of trial and error (…) I remember things that I hadn’t expected like for example one was a bed-wetter and that kind of thing’ or ‘Maybe not even social services knew how bad things were with her. There wasn’t a lot that agreed with what they had described, though maybe they didn’t know more either (…) we received a girl who we thought just had problems with her parents and didn’t have problems herself’. Those foster parents who described reasons for a lack of information named connections between the kind of financial compensation they got as foster parents, rules around confidentiality, and social workers’ lack of knowledge about certain kinds of problems.
The ‘ordinary’ family meets the ‘extraordinary’ child
Foster parents ideas of why children are placed and of the problems they exhibit, revealed children coming from difficult home environments who largely also have behaviour problems themselves or show other signs of ‘doing poorly’. In particular, adolescent risk behaviour put high demands on some foster families: She was depressed and was supposed to take medication for it and everything but it wasn’t any better. She tried to take her life several times and things like that (…) When those people at Child and Youth Psychiatry told me after, that she had tried to take her own life and was in the ER and everything – and that we should keep a close eye on her – an ordinary little family, like we are going to sit awake every night and watch over her the whole time – that’s not going to work either but that’s what they expected us to do.
Even younger children’s behaviour took a toll of foster families: He was feeling terrible in other ways. He was like a wagon behind me also bit by bit (…) he followed me everywhere and almost never left my side. Here inside he could spend time in his room but if we went anywhere or, as he said himself I’m like your wagon. When he didn’t see me he went directly looking for me and trying to find out where I was (…), I was very, I don’t know, isolated I was going to say.
The child’s biological parents and contact between the child and parents was described by some as an asset and by others as a strain. ‘That was the problem all these years that she wouldn’t leave them in peace. They never set roots here (…) we would have to start over in some way after every contact they had with their mother and over time they slowly drifted away from us’. It could also be described as a relief. ‘So then she went and stayed with her mother and I could leave her there. It was a bit of a respite for me at that moment’. Even the foster parents’ descriptions of the children’s parents spanned the range of seeing their relationship as working well to seeing it as a great source of stress. For example, biological parents could be threatening or have negative views of the foster home. In one case, the threat was so significant that the foster parents had security alarms installed and had a direct number to the police. ‘We were supposed to be offered an “attack” alarm and we were supposed to have contacts with the police. I even had my own phone number to the police so that I really could get through to them’.
‘A cry for help’
A number of patterns emerged in how foster parents described contact with social workers. They described having difficulty establishing and then having very little contact with their social workers. They would have to telephone or email with specific questions as a way of guaranteeing an answer or, develop independence in seeking support from other services for example the child’s school or the local child and youth psychiatric unit. However, they also expressed an understanding of the difficulties faced by social workers who have too much to do and too little time: For the most part it is I who calls and talks, tells them things and ask questions (…) I mean they are supposed to follow up every six months and so more than half a year can go by and they realize that we need to meet to do a review. (…) but I mean I know they have a lot of work to do and everyone thinks that their issue is the most important (…) so I guess I understand that they don’t always have time for someone and some things.
Where support and contact with social services was described positively in spite of placement breakdown, the consistent element in these descriptions was that the social worker kept in contact and responded immediately when a foster family requested help. ‘The social worker was sitting in some meeting so I left a message saying it was somewhat urgent. I don’t even think it took a minute for her to call me back. I really appreciated that – someone dealing with things when you really need it’. Satisfaction at getting support quickly did not necessarily mean that a problem was solved quickly or even that the social worker could deal with the situation directly. Rather, their immediate response left a positive feeling in the foster home.
‘Cutting ties – experiencing breakdown’
In our study, placements broke down for a variety of reasons. Foster parents or children initiated it themselves, social services ended the placements, or parents withdrew consent to out-of-home care. In those cases where breakdown was initiated by social services, the decision to move/return a child was given suddenly – a quick telephone call and the placement ended. In one case, the foster parent received a telephone call regarding a child who had been placed for six years and that the child, who was on a home visit with their biological mother, would not be returning to care. ‘Then the social services called and called us into question and then they just told us, the child is not coming back to you (…) everything became one big…, I still think back and wonder what happened (…) we never really had any kind of ending where we like sat together and talked about what happened that day.’
Where foster families initiated the breakdown, they described how they were overwhelmed by the child’s needs. ‘It was so difficult and I was so tired and finished because he took so much of my strength and energy all the time (…) so one day after I had taken him to school I just broke down’ or ‘We didn’t get any help from anywhere and (…) when he tried to kill himself for the third time in a week it was just too much’. In one case, the foster parents described how their biological children were being negatively impacted by the placement. ‘It started having an effect on our own child. He started getting very demanding and copying – (…) and we knew then that it wasn’t worth it’.
Regardless of the reasons for the placement breakdown, foster parents stories shared a theme of wanting more support. ‘We called and called but we never got any support. They didn’t have time. I mean that might be true but we really called for help’. When foster parents described having a good relationship to the social worker they did not describe placement breakdown in as negative terms as the other foster parents. These foster parents described how the social worker actively dealt with the breakdown and were clear: ‘I think Susan who was our social worker at the time did a super clear job in this case’.
The determining factor for how foster parents experienced placement breakdown was not connected to who initiated breakdown. The description of their feelings surrounding the breakdown were described in similar ways by those who themselves initiated the breakdown and those where someone else initiated it. All of the respondents descriptions of the experiences of breakdown are permeated with more or less hard feelings where they use such words as: terribly difficult and that they felt upset, offended, angry and sad. Breakdown was described as creating a large sore and discomfort as well as feelings that the foster parent was about to ‘break apart or go mad’. Three foster parents described their hurt feelings and connected them to the failure of their mission. ‘I mean they must think of us as huge traitors and that’s what has hurt me the most that they feel like we somehow abandoned them’, or ‘Somehow it feels like we gave up even if that wasn’t our intention. It feels that way now looking back’ or ‘maybe it was a failure (…) that I didn’t manage to give her a lasting home in that way…’
These negative emotions connected to breakdown were not just described as feelings held by the foster parents but something shared by relatives, biological children and other placed children. ‘The person hurt the most was Sandra. These were her sisters so it was terrible and she felt really bad because she had already experienced difficult separation and she felt like these really were her own sisters’.
Three of the families describe how the experience of placement was so difficult that they were drained of energy. ‘Afterwards, I mean we had been feeling terrible for a long time and we both felt like it was too much’. ‘(…) In some way it leaves a trace, a long, long time afterwards’, or ‘You are completely at your end because you, I mean she has demanded so much of your (…) In a way it’s like you’ve been burnt out by this whole period’. Two foster parents describe a return to energy as something positive that happened after a child was moved. ‘It took for sure a month or more before I felt what enormous energy she had sucked out of me because it was then that I started getting my energy back’.
In all cases, placements ended as suddenly as they had begun. ‘I think they could have said this like that, ok now Alfred is going to move home and then decide that he can come back and visit during a school break or something but there was nothing just *demonstrating a scissors cutting* just gone and so I think it’s pretty bad that there isn’t any plan. Just quick, out, and that’s it’.
Foster parents described with dissatisfaction the level of support they received after placement breakdown. It was minimal at best with the only measure offered being a termination meeting with social services. Some declined this closing meeting because they were dissatisfied about how the whole situation was handled and really wanted a meeting with the child. ‘We never did have an ending with social services. I really missed that and think we should have seen each other afterwards.’ They felt their need for support was not acknowledged or provided by social services. ‘I don’t go around talking about it with anyone but it can be tough and I can’t say that we’ve had any help with it’.
Most foster parents said that they believed breakdown could have been avoided in some circumstances: if they had received clearer information about the child prior to the placement, if they had received support and relief during the placement, and if all parties to the placement sat down and discussed alternatives prior to a placement ending. Emotional scars were left upon foster parents as well as influencing their attitudes toward future foster caring. They did not want to take the risk of having a child with emotional or behaviour problems because of the risks involved to the placement. And, they did not want to take younger children for fear of becoming attached to – and then possibly losing – them. This could be a grief too profound to live through one more time.
‘Strong connections to children – silence from social services’
Placement breakdown did not lead to a complete cessation in contact between the foster parents and children. All had maintained some kind of contact although the relationship clearly had changed. Contact ranged from sporadic, for example, sending birthday wishes, to regular and frequent communication. Contact continued regardless of who initiated the breakdown, even in cases where foster parents could no longer cope with a child’s negative behaviour. ‘But it is kind of nice because I have contact with her and she calls from time to time so actually we’ve found our way back to staying in contact’. Several families described how a child is always welcome to visit them and that one child requested to remain in contact after a breakdown. ‘In all her mails she says that she wants to come and visit and I always tell her that she is welcome – because she is. If ever anything happened and Linda needed something, we’d be there for her and I think she knows it’. Contact between foster parents and their previous foster children took place without the planning or support of the social services. ‘She still wanted to visit us and could do it sometimes. We were told that we could be her “contact family (…)” It wasn’t anything written down anywhere but I have actually seen Anna every month (…) I tried to contact social services. I don’t know how many times I tried to call them and left messages but she never got back to me.’
Placement breakdown was followed by a sudden silence from social services. ‘We’ve never had an ending and I haven’t heard a word since we took some of the child’s things back home’. And it was a bitter ending. ‘I think that it’s bad on the social services because they went and did things this way and then they dump the foster family and don’t care about them anymore. I mean, you’ve taken on the responsibility [to be foster parents] and they could at least be in touch’.
Analysis and discussion
Placement breakdown needs to be understood as a complex process rather than a single event – starting in the contrast between foster parents’ vision of their mission and that of the social services. At least in the perception of these foster parents, there is a discrepancy between the statutory obligations of the social services toward the foster home and the foster parents’ perceptions of the kind of information and support they actually receive.
The caring perspective, described as a desire to offer a caring and protective home, to act as ‘substitute’ parents, and to raise children so that they will grow into well-functioning adults is, in many respects, the same goal that parents have for their own biological children. However, the children placed with them are, at a group level, different from other children, and this may make it more difficult to normalize the parenting role of foster parents. Children in care in Sweden have largely experienced both significant problems in their home environments and have had serious behaviour problems before being placed in out-of-home care (Khoo et al., 2012). At the same time – and as described in previous research (Rostill-Brookes et al., 2011) – the foster home’s ability to prepare itself for children’s needs is often limited by the quick process involved in placing children as well as a lack of information received by the foster parents about the child prior to placement. This deprives foster parents of the possibility to assess their own abilities and makes it more difficult for them to develop strategies to meet the child’s needs. Foster parents also described how the environment in the foster children’s home of origin and their own behaviour problems often and significantly affected their own family’s everyday life. Their view of fostering as a form of substitute parenting can become problematic as they are parenting children with difficult life experiences and often complex needs. Their substitute parenting is further complicated by contact with the child’s biological parents who often have their own problems in the form of substance abuse or poor mental health (Khoo et al., 2012).
High demands are placed on foster parents’ ability to provide care and offer a loving home to children who have been raised in difficult environments and who have behaviour problems. The foster parents in our study, however, describe aggression and emotionally labile behaviours from another perspective. For them, it is not the behaviour as such but rather the social services care planning (or lack thereof) and insufficient support and relief that lead to placement instability for children with behaviour problems. Our results are supported by Hyde and Kammerer’s (2009) study where children in care experienced changes in placement because of behaviour problems connected to difficult life situations prior to coming into care and foster parents’ uncertainty around how to manage their behaviour. Given that teenagers with behaviour problems comprise the largest age group of children in care in Swedish child welfare – and almost 40 percent of their placements end in breakdown – a dialogue needs to take place around how to best meet the needs of children and young people entering into out-of-home care.
In light of these challenges, support and relief are two prerequisites that foster parents say are necessary to handle their responsibilities. Our findings suggest that foster parents are treated as a normal family without being offered relief and that, to a great extent, they are left on their own to look after and handle the children in their care. A lack of continuing support means that the road leading to giving a child care and security is travelled in the dark and without signposts.
Our study is supported by previous research (e.g. Christiansen et al., 2010) which indicates that the success of the mission of a foster parent is made possible through the provision of information and support about the child and the foster parent role, having a good relationship to a social worker, and receiving individualized support at the right times. At the same time, our study is about foster parents’ own perceptions and cannot say anything about the kinds of supports that social services actually offered. In spite of the intentions of social services, the foster parents experienced a lack of information and communication and a failure to receive support and relief. Placement breakdown is experienced negatively and is strongly perceived as a failure leaving long-lasting and strongly felt emotions. If they enter into this role believing that they are surrogate parents until children are grown up, foster parents certainly risk feeling like they have failed in their parenting role.
Placement breakdown was an experience characterized by its suddenness and unplanned nature – beginning and often ending with a lack of planning. A child’s problematic behaviour could be used as an explanation for the problem of instability in out-of-home care when it may be a lack of planning on the part of social services that has contributed to the problem. In this sense, a failure to attend to structural problems may lead to children being even more marginalized in the care system. One risk is that placing a child in care is, by itself, seen as the solution to an individual child’s problems. This may leave the child at risk of rejection and may result in a child re-living the same kinds of problems experienced in their families of origin. In these circumstances, fostering may become an unmanageable role with goals that are impossible to fulfil and posing significant risks to both the foster family and the children themselves. In spite of this study’s limited scope, foster parents are an important source of knowledge about the foster caring experience and the need to improve care provision. From their perspective, they point to the need for:
More involvement of foster parents in the matching process; including that foster parents need complete information to decide, for themselves, if they are the right family to meet the needs of specific children. Care planning that includes the needs of carers for specific supports and relief during a child’s placement. When a placement ends abruptly, do not terminate contact with foster parents equally abruptly. Include them in the child’s care review in order for all to understand why the placement ended and to determine if and how contact may continue between the child and the foster home.
Foster parents describe how these children are a part of their families and that placed children, in many cases, grow up as siblings to other children in the family. Foster parents, foster siblings and other relatives have become ‘significant others’ for these children. Although the foster placement may have ended in breakdown, the relationship between the foster family and child was and may continue to be of lasting significance.
Footnotes
Funding
We wish to thank the Children’s Welfare Foundation Sweden and The Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research for financing this study. Many thanks also go to the foster parents in this study who opened up their hearts and homes and shared their experiences with us.