The motivations for fostering and its connections with healthy family relationships in a sample of non parental foster families from Madrid. A qualitative study of 26 foster children and their foster families using a multi-instrument research.

Although the difference between adoption and foster care is meant to be clearly established in theory, the reality is that the distintion still remains insatisfactory in practice. There are few non-kinship foster families in... [ view full abstract ]

Although the difference between adoption and foster care is meant to be clearly established in theory, the reality is that the distintion still remains insatisfactory in practice. There are few non-kinship foster families in Madrid, mostly due to deficient promotion and support. Therefore the professionals frequently accept foster families that are being drawn towards taking care of children because they want to be parents. This, however, is not the adequated attitude towards foster caring. In Madrid the permanency in family foster care is remarkably long, but due to inadequate reasons: foster families frecuently expect the children stay with them forever and the professionals and child protection services prefer to promote this permanency instead of working towards family reunification.
This paper is based on a research about the effects of caregiver´s motivations to become foster parents upon the fostered children´s family relationships taken for a sample of non kinship foster families of Madrid. We have found that a significant percentage of these are families who desired to foster, moved by the desire of having children and, after they had abandoned the route offered by adoption for various reasons. For others, adoption is a driver together with other issues. For several families in our sample this motivation has not prevented them from understanding the different nature of adoption and fostering. These families have succeeded in allowing their foster children to experience a double belonging, as we will show afterwards with different examples. We have however also analysed cases in which these wrong motivations affected their family relationships and how these children perceive and understand their relationship with their biological families. There are even some families that openly express their desire that the children they are fostering were fully theirs and that the relationship of these children with their biological family should be avoided.
In conclusion families with “non possessive” approach are better able to have healthy family relationships than the others. This research shows how support and monitoring are necessary in order to detect this problematic positions that can produce significant problems and jeopardize the success of family foster cares.
The implications of these findings for family support and professional training are also discussed.