Paper
Permanence in long-term foster care: family relationships and professional systems
- issue: Issue 1-2013 / 2013
- authors: Gillian Schofield
- keywords: permanence; foster care; planning systems; professionals and parenting
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abstract
Context. There are concerns for the stability and outcomes for children in long-term foster care among policy makers in England and many other countries. The goal of permanence for children separated from their birth families and in the care of the state has dominated child care policy and practice in the UK, the USA and Canada since the 1980s. But the meaning of permanence in terms of stability, emotional security and family membership into adulthood is complex, and the placements and legal status thought best able to achieve permanence are contested in principle and for individual children.
A series of research studies in the Centre for Research on Children and Families at the University of East Anglia have explored the nature of permanence in foster care, and the interaction between care planning systems and foster family life (Schofield et al. 2012). These studies have explored long-term foster care from the perspectives of children, foster carers, birth parents and social workers. Our research has also investigated the systems for planning for permanence in long-term foster family care in England, where it is accepted by policy makers that this is a legitimate permanence option but there has been a lack of guidance on how it should be achieved. The aim of this recent research on care planning has been to consider the fit between the planning and reviewing systems designed to achieve permanence in foster care and the reality of planned permanent placements as experienced by foster children and foster carers.
This research has in particular investigated the role that foster carers play as both professionals and as parents. In the literature on work-family balance, role and boundary issues are commonly discussed in relation to parents who work outside of the home. Work and family are considered as two different spheres of activity, with different role identities and cultural meanings. For foster carers, however, in very significant ways their family is their work and their work is their family - so roles are not so clearly separated and boundaries are not so clearly defined (Schofield et al. 2013).
The research has also explored the complexity of children's experience, in particular their complex identities constructed from different memberships / connections with multiple families and, as children in care, exposed to a range of professional procedures and practices.
This chapter will bring together key findings for children, foster carers and professionals. It will also draw on a separate study of parents of children in long-term foster care (Schofield et al. 2010) as foster children continue to think about, have feelings about and often have face to face contact with birth family members.
Methods. In the main study to which this paper refers:
- a sample of 230 cases of children in planned long-term foster care in six local authorities was identified;
- family histories and care pathways were documented from the case files;
- interviews were conducted with 40 foster carers and 20 children;
- multi-agency focus groups were conducted with professionals in six local authorities.
Findings. Committed relationships within foster families were helping many children to feel a sense of permanence and to become part of the family. However, planning and reviewing procedures required by the State as part of the «corporate parenting» responsibility for children in care were often not adapted to the special nature of these long-term foster placements, which were intended to provide committed parents and ordinary family life.
Successful foster carers were able to integrate the «committed parent» and «skilled professional foster carer» roles in order to meet the needs of long-term foster children. They provided sensitive «secure base» parenting while also working with the local authority and the multi-agency team around the child.
Successful outcomes for children in permanent placements will include stability and achievements, such as education, but also a sense of belonging (see Biehal et al. 2010) and the capacity to manage multiple family identities.
Conclusions for practice. Although planning and reviewing systems need to be rigorous, they also need to be more child and family sensitive in permanent long-term foster care placements.
Practice needs to promote the foster family's capacity to offer sensitive care and support for activity, while also training and empowering carers to act as skilled professionals.
Birth relatives need to receive services in their own right so that they can be helped to support long-term foster placements.
Social workers need to work with children to ensure that they are thriving developmentally, but also that they have opportunities to express their opinions and communicate their needs.
Attachment, resilience and a sense of belonging are important theoretical frameworks to build on for practice, and so should be included in core training and further professional development of social workers.
Key references
Biehal, N., Ellison, S., Baker, C. and Sinclair, I. (2010). Belonging and permanence: outcomes in long-term foster care and adoption, London: BAAF.
Schofield, G. and Beek, M. (2009). Growing up in foster care: providing a secure base through adolescence. Child and Family Social Work, 14 (3), 255-266.
Schofield, G., Moldestad, B., Hojer, I., Ward, E., Skilbred, D., Young, J. and Havik, T. (2010). Managing loss and a threatened identity: experiences of parents of children growing up in foster care, perspectives of social workers and implications for practice. British Journal of Social Work, 41(1), 74-92.
Schofield, G., Beek, M. and Ward, E. (2012). Part of the Family: Care Planning for Permanence. Foster Care Children and Youth Services Review, 34, 244-253.
Schofield, G., Beek, M., Ward, E. and Biggart, L. (2013). Professional foster carer and committed parent: role conflict and role enrichment at the interface between work and family in long-term foster care. Child and Family Social Work, 18, 46-56.