Family reunification after short term out-of - home placement: mothers' perspective

The relevance of the research. In Lithuania, the number of children who are reunited with their families is about 6-8 percent. Majority children are replaced from the sinle mother families. There is a lack of scientific... [ view full abstract ]

The relevance of the research. In Lithuania, the number of children who are reunited with their families is about 6-8 percent. Majority children are replaced from the sinle mother families. There is a lack of scientific articles about what is happening in the life of the mothers when they are trying to get their children back from the temporary out- of- home placement in Lithuania. What determines the success of such processes? What actors in the society are the most relevant in this situation and what kind of support is the most effective at that time?
The research aim is to construct a grounded theory by revealing the child and family reunification process from the mothers’ perspectives. Five mothers who managed to get their children back from the temporary out- of- home placements took part in the research. The average age of the mothers who took part in the survey was about 28 years.
Research results: four phenomena were distinguished during the axial coding. "Why does it happen?", "I had a difficult and long path to walk through", "I have strived for that and succeeded", " I felt as I had lost my home, my homeland, my flag". The following paradigm has been constructed during the selective coding: the key to success “I somehow managed to climb over myself”. In vivo codes were created based on the phrases shared by the mothers who took part in the survey. On the basis of the aforementioned paradigm, a grounded theory has been constructed, which has revealed identity changes in the mothers who managed to recover their children from the temporary out- of -home placement.
In Lithuania, many families, especially single mothers are forced to raise their children in especially difficult and socially poor conditions. Mothers have to overcome the gaps in laws and bureaucratic obstacles in order to take care of their children properly. Eventually mothers fail to overcome crises and tension and thus cannot take care of their children the way they should. Different condotions of child placements influenced mother's decisions. A negative family experience as Childhood family model has also repeated in the families taking part in the survey. When the child is separated from his/her family, mothers suffer emotional stress. The consequences for mothers may be as follows: thoughts about suicide, alcoholism, the loss of hope, etc. In order to get their children back to their families, the mothers made significant efforts: communicated with the specialists responsible for the rights of children, tried to improve their living conditions and proved their strong desire not to go back to their former way of living and ability to take care of their children properly. Those mothers who have succeeded to get their children back to their families tried to maintain a balance with regard to the changes in their family: they tried to eliminate the main reasons, which have resulted in child –out- of- home placement. Mothers actively used social assistance as well.
Pressing social forces from the state policy and culture and supportive actions of social workers and extended families help to change the attitudes to herself and the way of living.