Adoption & Fostering

Discussions about provision for children in the care of the state have continually raised the question, can the corporate state parent? Roger Bullock, Mark E Courtney, Roy Parker, Ian Sinclair and June Thoburn consider the question in the light of recent studies of separated children. It is argued that while the state does not need to fulfil all parenting responsibilities when care is shared with families or children are adopted, for three groups of children parenting issues are especially salient. They are: children in kinship care, in long-term foster family care and young people who are seriously troubled and troublesome. Research that would produce relevant information and recommendations to improve the state's parenting is suggested.

As seen in recent evaluative studies, family foster care is in crisis in Australia, the UK and the USA, as in other Western countries. Although it has the potential to provide children and young people with nurturing substitute families, such a service cannot be expected to serve adequately all youth at risk of abuse, neglect and separation from their birth families. Anthony Maluccio and Frank Ainsworth argue that in order to promote the effectiveness of family foster care, we need to engage in further research, particularly in regard to what fostering can and cannot do, how agencies can reduce stress on foster carers and how to enhance policies and programmes dealing with the consequences of multiple placements, placement disruptions and problematic patterns of parental contact.

Portrayals of looked after children often rely on misconceptions about their needs, experiences and development. While their disadvantaged status should not be ignored, poor outcomes are often emphasised at the expense of good ones and pejorative stereotypes can prevail. In light of two recent publications, Care Matters (DfES, 2006) and Handle with Care (Sergeant, 2006), A D Hare and Roger Bullock seek to dispel some of these misconceptions and provide a more accurate picture of looked after children. While such attempts to promote the welfare of looked after children and young people are welcome, questions are raised about whether theirs is the best approach.

Kate Cairns, an experienced foster carer, discusses the fundamental questions about the success and limitations of substitute parenting raised in the preceding three articles (Bullock et al, 2006; Hare and Bullock, 2006; Maluccio and Ainsworth, 2006). She describes how she and her husband tried to address them when caring for separated children. It is argued that while parenting foster children is different in some ways from parenting birth children, it is possible to provide separated children with a sense of permanence and a foundation for healthy and fulfilling development. The article is based on an interview with Annemieke Kalsbeek.

Alison McLeod describes a research project that explored the effectiveness of communication between social workers and young people in care. Interviews with young people revealed that, even though their social workers had described making significant efforts to listen to them, the young people did not feel their voices were heard. It is argued that this contradiction arises because the adults and the children understood something different by the term ‘listening’. The adults saw it more in terms of paying respectful attention to what the young people had to say. The young people, in contrast, felt that listening was demonstrated by delivering services that accorded with their expressed wishes. The two also had different conceptions of the social worker's role. While the adults regarded emotional support and therapeutic intervention as key elements of the social work role, few young people shared this view. Although they appreciated reliable social worker availability, what they valued most was practical support combined with promotion of their self-determination. The implications of these findings for childcare social work are discussed.

Although professional intermediary work to facilitate contact between people separated by adoption is a common aspect of after-adoption work, relatively little light has been cast on the nuances of this sensitive area of practice. Hitherto a service mainly used by adopted people seeking contact with their birth relatives, it is anticipated that there will be growing numbers of people seeking the help of intermediaries as a result of the Adoption and Children Act (2002) which, from January 2006, has extended official tracing and contact services to birth relatives. This article by Gary Clapton combines a practice account of intermediary work with a critical review of the literature on the use of intermediaries. It seeks to bring together what has been publicly written about best practice and identify questions in need of further discussion.