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When children have been settled for several years in long-term foster families, there is a tendency for them to take a lower priority on caseloads, or even for them not to be allocated at all. Social workers can feel redundant when children are fully assimilated into the life of the foster family and they sometimes speak of having "nothing much to do". Team managers who are juggling demands in the face of staff shortages and political pressures may choose to "de-allocate" these cases, keep them "on hold" for allocation, or attach them "nominally" to a worker who only responds to crises.

Our study¹ of 52 children who have been in long-term foster care for at least four years found that, at the beginning of 2001, only 25 were allocated to an actively involved social worker.

Yet caring for troubled children can be stressful and exhausting for foster carers, who should not be expected to work in isolation. Our research has shown that the input of skilled and consistent child care social workers substantially enhanced and strengthened the care-giving systems around the children. But what were the social workers actually doing when they called? How were the visits helpful to the carers and to the children, most of whom were settled and making good progress, despite their complex needs?

During visits that were often described as "routine", social workers were, in fact, combining observation, listening and communication skills. The following extract from the social worker of a 13-year-old child with learning difficulties illustrates this subtle blend, used during a regular visit to the foster home.

"Visits happen after school or during school holidays. Samantha is often drawing and will accept my sitting with her while she draws. She will invite or accept my interest in her drawings. Recently she has shown less willingness to talk but this fits with her pubertal behavioural changes. We talk about her drawings, holidays, school and any recent family activities, and also of visits by [her] birth family. We look at recent photographs taken at her carer's home. The visits inform me of her development and social skills and health and inform my support to the carers."

This social worker is alert to the child's physical and mental well-being, her developmental progress and her functioning at school and within the family. She is offering a physical and emotional link with the birth family. A warm and consistent relationship enables her to pick up signals of stress in the child or the carers and she can be proactive in providing more input or seeking additional resources if required.

Carers valued the fact that "involved" social workers could provide the children with opportunities to relate to sensitive adults outside the foster home. This was an additional source of containment for anxiety and a channel for the safe expression of strong feelings.

In addition, thoughtful workers could enhance or support reflective capacity in the carers. They offered a space in which carers could test out their theories about the child's behaviour or state of mind and explore possible links with earlier life experiences. Through this process, carers were being helped to make sense of the children, to contextualise their chaotic thoughts and emotions. They could then reflect a more ordered and manageable version of the world back to the child, thus containing and reducing anxiety.

A trusted social worker could also provide carers with a channel for the feelings of anger or despair that the children engendered. This was important since it helped the carers to feel more understood and less guilty, and feel that their responses were "reasonable in the circumstances". Proactive strategies could take the place of impulsive reactions. One foster mother spoke of the "safety valve" of releasing her strong feelings to the trusted "team" of social worker and family placement worker who had known her and her foster child for many years.

There are inherent ambiguities and anomalies for carers who are performing all of the parenting tasks and have made a lifetime commitment to a child and yet have no parental responsibility in a legal sense. They need to feel in a strong and confident position as day-to-day parents, and social workers hold the key to facilitating or restricting this. Carers in our study felt empowered and supported when decisions about haircuts, staying overnight with trusted friends, and routine school and health matters had been officially delegated to them. Conversely, they felt undermined when every small thing had to be referred to a social worker, or guilty when they circumvented the system and "just got on with it" without official permission.


For children who cannot live permanently with their birth families, the certainty of foster family membership can provide a sense of direction and the reassurance of practical and emotional support throughout life. At the same time, they need to manage a sense of also belonging to their birth families and to maximise the potential for supportive relationships from within this network. Social workers played an important role in helping foster carers to achieve and sustain this delicate balance.

Carers held the belief that foster family membership should enable children to "get on with life", to be free of stigma and feel as "normal" as possible. Social workers who supported this view avoided making appointments that invaded important areas of school or family life and they ensured that review procedures were non-stigmatising and comfortable for the children.

When foster family membership was held in due regard, carers could feel liberated to respond to children's needs for an appropriate sense of birth family membership. For example, when an intrusive Saturday contact was changed to a weekday evening, it gave an opportunity for the foster mother and the birth mother to talk together as people with a shared concern for the child. Greater trust developed, and the foster mother was motivated to ensure that the child gained maximum enjoyment and benefit from the contact. She described the way in which they had celebrated the birth mother's 30th birthday by buying and wrapping 30 small gifts. This pleasurable shared activity underlined the child's sense of belonging to both families and provided the message that both sets of relationships are to be valued and enjoyed.

Other important tasks and responsibilities were reported by the social workers. Many met birth family members regularly and were involved in contact meetings, providing transport, supervision or support to the carers. Most had a liaison role with schools, especially when children had special learning needs. Additionally, they acted as advocates for the children and carers, referring issues to other services when appropriate and ensuring that existing input was helpful. Respite care arrangements were supported and reviewed.

Like sensitive parents, skilled social workers paid close attention to the detail of the children's lives. They were alert to the complexity of the care-giving system, recognised its strengths and ensured that gaps were filled where necessary. This placed them in a strong position from which to fulfil their dual function of both monitoring and supporting the placements. In doing so they were playing a complex, valued and valuable role in promoting the stability and well-being of children who are growing up in foster care.

Mary Beek is senior research associate and Gillian Schofield is deputy director at the centre for research on the child and family at the University of East Anglia. For more information e-mail m.beek@uea.ac.uk  

References

¹ Gillian Schofield and Mary Beek, Growing Up in Foster Care, Baaf Adoption and Fostering, 2000, is a longitudinal study of 52 children from six local authorities, placed for long-term fostering in 1997-8 and followed up in 2001 (in publication). The study is funded by the Nuffield Foundation