Foster children's voices: placement and foster family care in the eyes of foster children

This contribution refers to the views of former foster children, young adults now, about their experiences during placements and their lives in foster family care. Researches advocating the perspectives of foster children are... [ view full abstract ]

This contribution refers to the views of former foster children, young adults now, about their experiences during placements and their lives in foster family care. Researches advocating the perspectives of foster children are quite rare. Little is known about how children experience their times as part of a child protection measure. The here proposed contribution is based on a recently finished 3 years research project, funded by the Swiss Science Foundation (SNF). The research focus on two levels of interest: 1. interest in the perspectives of former foster children. 2. we compare these perspectives with the views of relevant adults we interviewed in addition. The comparison of the different perspectives reveales several issues: (A) The views of all involved persons about the problem to solve, the roles they incorporate, differ considerably, not only in terms of antagonistic ‘adults versus children’ or ‘social workers versus users’. (B) The setting “Foster Family Care” is shaped by permanent negotiations about power relations in general, power to define a situation in particular. (C) The "doing foster family" processes are highly dynamic. These sometimes overwhelming processes in the lives of foster families, are not rarely discussed as due to the children’s difficulties with their lives and experiences they had before placement(s). Our research therefore discusses another interpretation: The perspectives of former foster children indicate how they deal with what could be referred to as power differentials (Machtdifferenziale), formulated by Norbert Elias. The here proposed contribution can be discussed under two main topics: under the perspective of knowledge production in collaboration with service users, and under the perspective of how to deal with the role of a researcher as “advocate”, to bring light into practices of social work with children in the conflicting field of child protection.