Adoption & Fostering

This article by Hedi Argent is based on her recent book, Ten Top Tips: Supporting kinship placements (BAAF, 2009). Here she explores the barriers to best practice in family and friends placements. Her experience of working with children and families in both local authorities and voluntary agencies goes back nearly 40 years and follows the journey of kinship care from being an informal private arrangement to becoming the statutorily acknowledged first consideration for all children who need alternative family placements.

Policy and practice developments need to be based on firm evidence about how well kinship care (that is, placements with relatives or friends) works and the services required to maintain these placements. The research reported by Elaine Farmer was based on case file reviews of 270 children, half in kin placements and half in non-kin foster care, and on interviews with a subsample of 32 kin carers, social workers, children and parents. The study found that while the children were remarkably similar in the two kinds of placement, kin carers, in contrast, were significantly more disadvantaged than stranger foster carers. They also faced more hostility from birth parents during contact. The children's outcomes in terms of placement quality and disruption in the two settings were also very similar. However, because kin carers persisted with very challenging children and yet received fewer services than stranger foster carers, they were more often under strain. This article compares the characteristics of carers and children in the two kinds of placement and examines the impact of the children on the kin carers and the strains they experienced. It also considers the services received and needed by kin carers and children. The implications for policy and practice are examined.

One of the key arguments put forward for the benefits of kinship placements is that they are likely to provide permanency for children. However, little is known about the factors which promote placement stability or the reasons for placement disruption. Eleanor Lutman, Joan Hunt and Suzette Waterhouse examine placement stability and disruption for a cohort of children placed in kinship care through care proceedings (Hunt et al, 2008). When compared with disruption rates for other forms of care, it appears that for younger children kinship care can be a positive option but the figures are less positive for older children. However, after disruption over half of the kinship-placed children remained within their family networks and many kinship carers retained a positive relationship with the child. The findings indicate placements of older children, placements with aunts/uncles and placements where the carer and child are less familiar with each other are more likely to disrupt and thus may need more support.

Kinship care in Scotland has been receiving considerable attention recently as part of the Scottish Government's strategic plan for children. The strategy Getting it Right for Every Child focuses on the child in their community and family and what services need to be provided to help every child achieve their potential and to grow into responsible adults. In this article Anne Black describes the development of an assessment and approval process for kinship carers for looked after children. She also considers what kinds of supports and skill development kinship carers want and need. She shares the work of a task group set up in 2008 as part of the Getting it Right for Every Child in Kinship and Foster Care strategy. The group saw the focus of assessment being on the child's plan and how kinship carers can meet the identified needs of the child and with what supports. The need for simplification of the benefits maze for kinship carers is acknowledged, as some kinship carers are likely to be less well off if they receive allowances from the local authority than if they continue to receive universal benefits. The task group developed a vision for kinship care, including a reduction of the numbers of children living in kinship care families who are subject to statutory measures of care. The vision also includes access to universal services at the time the kinship carers need them and recognition of the value and skills of kinship carers.

Jane Aldgate describes findings from a Scottish research study on kinship care. Her article is drawn from a commissioned study which informed a government review of children looked after by local authorities in Scotland in 2006. The article presents the perspectives of the 30 children in the study on living in kinship care. It explores children's understanding of the reasons for their placements and their views on the future, as well as on the roles and tasks of social workers. Children speak of both the negative and positive challenges of living in kinship care, including maintaining contact with parents and siblings. Children's everyday lives, including experiences of school, peers and activities are recounted. The article ends by describing the Scottish Government's new policy for improving services for children in kinship care.

The data reported in this article by Jesús Palacios and Jesús M Jiménez come from a study of foster care in Andalusia, southern Spain. In Andalusia, as in the rest of Spain, kinship care is far more frequent than non-relative foster care. The authors explore the differences between these two types of foster care arrangement in a number of areas: socio-demographic profiles; children's stimulation and patterns of rearing; stress, informal support and needs; formal support and relationships with child protection services; evaluation of the experiences of carers; contact between birth parents and children; and foster children's development and behavioural difficulties. Although, compared with non-relative care, there are some clear advantages to kinship foster care (eg placement at an early age and fewer transitions), there are also a number of risk factors in all areas studied that must be considered to avoid what should be a protective placement becoming a risk situation for both carers and children.

Chris Warren-Adamson reports on the proceedings of a collaborative enquiry group of eight social workers from one English local authority considering kinship or family and friends care practice. Facilitated by an academic, the group met once a month for the best part of a year to enquire into the implications for practitioners of the authority's strong policy of encouraging kinship placement for looked after children. The article briefly acknowledges the context of ‘kinship care’ and the collaborative enquiry process, before concentrating on a consideration of the challenges to kinship practice. The article concludes with a discussion about two inter-related sets of findings: first, technical or structural proposals about kinship practice; and second, enduring issues for social work practice, namely the overwhelming nature of complexity, the ill-management of anxiety and the questionable appropriateness of the agency office as a site for kinship care practice.

The Adoption (Northern Ireland) Order 1987, Article 18: freeing with paternal but without maternal consent; importance of opportunities for parental rehabilitation; and ‘good enough parenting’