Professional intervention in foster care breakdown

Although most foster care placements are successful, some face serious difficulties that can lead to the final separation between carers and children earlier than expected or planned. Typically, these unwanted separations are... [ view full abstract ]

Although most foster care placements are successful, some face serious difficulties that can lead to the final separation between carers and children earlier than expected or planned. Typically, these unwanted separations are the consequence of a combination of circumstances where the foster-care providers, the fostered children as well as professional intervention make specific contributions. This poster focuses on the characteristics of professional intervention in the breakdown process.

In the two years under study (2012-2013) there were 4078 children in foster care in Andalusia, a region of southern Spain, of which 3036 (74.5%) were in kinship foster care and 1042 (25.5%) in non-kinship foster families. All of the 116 cases of foster care breakdown analysed in this incidence study occurred during this time period of. According to their relative weight, the majority of the breakdown cases happened in kinship (62.1%) and the rest (37.9%) in non-kinship care; 55.7% were girls and 44.3% were boys. The average age of the children was approximately 7 years old when the placement began to fail, being similar for kinship and non-kinship cases.

Results show that professional intervention was present in most families (82%) during the adaptation phase due to follow up reports (51%) or to the presence of problems (31%). In 18% there was no professional intervention. In most cases (81%), advice was the main intervention, although diagnostic (13%) and treatment (22%) were also present. These initial interventions were more frequently sporadic (56%) than stable (42%). The situation did not change much when problems escalated and the placement was at serious risk, with advice (60%) predominating over all other types of professional action (3% treatment), and with the sporadic actions (61%) predominating even more over stable interventions (33%). Professional intervention was similar in its frequency and characteristics with respect to both kinship and non-kinship families.

In conclusion, results confirm that the initial problems should not be minimalized nor considered typical of the mutual adaptation process. More training and specialization of professionals is needed, as well as more complete intervention protocols. Among these, a more systematic screening of the initial difficulties is needed as a means to intervene before the difficulties escalate.