News

At any one time there are about 80,000 children in the care system in the UK. Foster carers look after just under two-thirds of this group, a proportion that has steadily increased. Such a rise in “market share” is a sign of success, but it also brings worries. Fewer residential placements mean more challenging foster children. At the same time, more contact between children and their families means more pressures on carers. And there have been reports of difficulties in recruiting carers, in valuing their work and in providing a theory to underpin it.

These concerns have led to a growth in research on fostering, much of it funded by the former sponsoring Scottish Office and Department of Health. A new report summarises this UK government research and draws messages for policy and practice.(1) Research in Practice, which has led on the implementation of this material, has produced a video CD and a set of leaflets to accompany it. So what has the research got to say?

First, the good news. For all its difficulties, the quality of foster care is highly impressive. The research bears witness to much good and dedicated practice. Carers are committed to their foster children. Foster children are – at least in most cases – appreciative of their carers. A high proportion of the longer-staying children want to stay in their current placement until they reach 18, and often beyond.

Second, there is a challenge. Much, it seems, is known about what makes placements succeed or fail. The list includes the way placements are made, the wishes and behaviour of foster children, the quality of the carers’ parenting, and the elusive “chemistry” between members of the foster family.

The report has chapters on the effects of contact with the child’s family (children commonly have positive contacts with one member of their family and detrimental ones with others) on the crucial importance of school and on supporting foster carers. The challenge is to turn such findings into effective training and practice and to find the political will to support carers when they need it.

Third, a dilemma exists. The research describes the “careers” of the longer-staying foster children. Some return home to families with continuing problems and little support. Many of these children do less well than those who remain looked after or those who are adopted. So, as most will not be adopted, should they remain in care?

Here, too, there are problems. Few children have long placements with the same carers that last beyond 18. Young people graduating out of care have to get by in the world at a much younger age than their contemporaries, with fewer qualifications and less family support. So many children neither acquire an enduring family nor return to a supportive one. The achilles heel of foster care is not so much what happens in it but what happens afterwards.

Finally, nothing in these studies suggests that organisational change, while common, benefits foster care. What matters is not so much how foster care is organised, but how well all concerned do their job.

So if organisational change does not help, what might? A helpful clue may come from the foster children themselves. Longer-staying children think about foster care in the context of their own families. A few want to remain with their foster carers and leave their own families behind. Another small group sees foster care as competitive with their families and wish to return home. What most want is the best of both worlds – either to remain with their carers but see more of their families or to return to their families and remain in touch with their carers.

If policy is to match these varying wishes we must look seriously at the range and types of care and support on offer. We must also attend to the children’s wish for a connection between foster care and their own families. In short, foster care has to become less a “port in a storm”. For some it will be a permanent harbour, albeit one that is well-connected to the outside world.

Permanent foster care is needed for those who might be harmed by return, even if they can safely maintain family contact from another base. And this may have implications for the explicit recognition of this form of care, for the empowerment of carers providing it, for the counselling of those who still yearn for their families and for the opportunity for young people to stay on beyond 18.

For others, foster care will be part of a working system, something that coheres with the child’s life and other service provision. Examples of this approach include shared care, in which care is genuinely shared between foster carers and parents and which offers parents time to think and take control of their lives. When care is provided by the child’s former foster carers it can capitalise on relationships that the system commonly squanders.


Kinship care (as successful as other forms but without anything like the same level of support) can also build on existing relationships and increases the overall pool of carers; it should be encouraged, and must be properly supported. Young people who want to return to homes they disrupt might benefit from a form of treatment foster care: something that allows both carers and parents to approach the young people in the same consistent way.

Wider changes are also needed if foster care is to be an effective agent for lasting change. All children need enduring relationships with adults who are committed to them. Foster care offers the chance of establishing such relationships: children are more likely to succeed in foster care if they want to be there, receive skilful committed parenting and are attached to a trusted adult. These issues are just as important when a child returns home. It is no good sending a child back home to a fraught household characterised by seriously troubled relationships if nothing has been done to improve those relationships while the child has been away and support ends arbitrarily as soon as the child returns. Coherence in approach requires coherence in understanding. So social workers and foster carers must operate according to the same understanding of what promotes well-being, provides a sense of identity and inhibits difficult behaviour.

In short foster care can and should be a lasting force for good in the troubled lives of children. For this to occur there must be a coherent connection between foster care and the child’s life.

Ian Sinclair has worked in teaching, industrial consultancy, probation, social work and social research. He is currently a part-time research professor in the social work research and development unit at the University of York, where he has recently overseen a programme of studies on foster care.

Celia Atherton is director of Research in Practice at the Dartington Hall Trust.

Training and learning
The author has provided questions about this article to guide discussion in teams. These can be viewed at www.communitycare.co.uk/prtl and individuals’ learning from the discussion can be registered on a free, password-protected training log held on the site. This is a service from Community Care for all GSCC-registered professionals.

Abstract
This article summarises government research on foster care, drawing messages for policy and practice. It concludes that wider changes are needed in the system if policy is to match the varying wishes of fostered children.

References
(1) I Sinclair, Fostering Now: Message from Research, Jessica Kingsley Publishing 2005. The main research report available from www.jklp.com/catalogue/book.php/isbn/1-84310-362-1)

Further information

• The following free implementation materials were all produced by Research in Practice for the DfES Fostering Team. Go to www.dfes.gov.uk/choiceprotects/recentnews/ or www.rip.org.uk/publications/fosteringnow.
• Fostering Now - six leaflets for different stakeholders: foster children, their families, foster carers, relatives who foster, elected members, professionals.
• Fostering Voices - a pack that includes all six leaflets and a video CD with four short film clips with advice from foster carers, foster children, and their families about what makes foster care work well.
• Fostering Now: The Fostering Services Development Exercises
   
  Contact the author
  By e-mail at acs5@york.ac.uk