In the majority of European countries, when it is necessary to remove a child or young person from their family, they are preferably placed in foster care rather than residential care (institutional setting). Foster care is based on the principle that every child or young person has the right to live in an alternative family. Foster carers are expected to protect and care for these children and young people, by being able to balance the demands of the professional and the parenting roles. They need to be skilled in this fostering role and to be motivated to achieve their fostering potential. These are some of the key elements for placement success, that can be measured through looked after children’s outcomes and through placement stability. However, this definition of placement success may not be applicable to child protection systems that are different and that focus on different type of placements. Knowing what makes a ‘successful’ foster placement can aid in the design and use of instruments that purport to measure foster carers’ skills and potential. The main goal of this paper is therefore to understand how ‘successful’ foster placements are defined by stakeholders from two different child protection systems.
To pursue this goal, focus groups were carried out with social workers, foster carers, care leavers (within five years of leaving care) and young people in care (16-17 years old), in England and in Portugal, the later with the cooperation of the research group InEd, «Contact in foster care: patterns, results and management models» project. Participants were asked to reflect about ‘placement success’ and to analyse the salience of items from the Casey Foster Applicant Inventory (Cuddeback, Buehler, Orme, & Le Prohn, 2007; Orme, Cuddeback, Buehler, Cox, & Le Prohn, 2006), an instrument designed to measure the qualities of foster carers and thought to be linked to fostering potential.
Manifest and latent content analysis of the data collected in the focus groups was conducted.
A comparison of results from the two countries allows us to identify some common characteristics that were highlighted by all the different groups, regardless of the country. For example, good foster carers are classified as the ones that are able to invest in the children and young people’s social and emotional development and that promote nurturing environments, and a placement can be classified as successful when looked after children present social and emotional development and when they are considered as part of the foster family. On the other hand, the main differences reflect the different conception of the foster carer role in each country. In England, foster carers are understood as professionals, whereas in Portugal they are seen as substitutes of the biological family, therefore the focus is on the characteristics of the parenting role. The literature and the legislation stresses that a skilled foster carer needs to balance these two roles. The findings from this study will be discussed considering the implications for policy and practice and the possible directions of these different child protection systems.
Keywords: Child protection systems, Foster care, Looked after children, Placement success
References:
Cuddeback, G. S., Buehler, C., Orme, J. G., & Le Prohn, N. S. (2007). Measuring foster parent potential: Casey Foster Parent Applicant Inventory – Worker Version (CFAI-W). Research on Social Work Practice, 17(1), 93-109.
Orme, J. G., Cuddeback, G. S., Buehler, C., Cox, M. E., & Le Prohn, N. (2006). Casey Foster Applicant Inventory (CFAI) technical manual. Knoxville: University of Tennessee, Children’s Mental Health Services Research Center.
