Fostering Families: a relationship-based alternative to separating them

By Zoe Ash and Toni Mayo

Many statutory social workers find themselves in an uncomfortable dilemma when carrying out their duties.

Contrary to the values that lead most into their profession, we can find ourselves in the profoundly uncomfortable position of causing unequivocal psychological harm when separating children from their parents.

For some children, foster care, residential care or care by someone within their extended network is considered necessary for their immediate or longer-term safety.

Yet, there are many families for whom long-term, relational support could prevent cycles of separation caused when their children are removed.

An alternative to foster care

Fostering Families is an alternative to foster care and draws upon ideas presented by Crittenden and Farnfield (2007).

It expands the definition of fostering to include long-term support to the whole family while the children remain at home. It aims to increase safety for children living with their biological family and prevent children being removed and placed into foster care with strangers.

Within Bath & North East Somerset (B&NES), we have recruited 12 Fostering Family carers over three years.

They have been specifically assessed, trained and supported to provide long-term support to a family who would otherwise be at risk of separation.

A relationship-based approach

Connection and relationships are at the heart of the approach. Each carer is matched to one family in need.

The carers’ minimum commitment to families is two years for at least 15 hours per week, but often it becomes substantially more.

The activities vary to meet specific family needs, including travel to appointments, housework and freeing parents to spend good-quality time with their children. The relationship is given time and space to develop as the two families merge, enabling families to experience a kinship connection with the fostering family.

A different experience of the child protection system

Fostering Families allows families and workers to experience the child protection system differently.

Separating children from their parents and placing them with foster carers, traumatises the children, their parents and wider family, and often the workers involved, and incurs substantial financial costs.

Instead, we support Fostering Families carers to support the whole family, sometimes until the children are grown.

Our work with families focuses on the parents’ readiness to engage in a supportive relationship.

How the Fostering Families process works

We meet with parents to introduce ourselves and explore how they feel fostering families may help them be the kind of parent they want to be. We learn about the lived experience of parents and children, identifying where there is strength in their ways of coping with adversity.

Through this process, we have learned that Fostering Families is most successful when there is general agreement with the family about the need and benefits of support.

Fostering Families can prevent cycles of imposed statutory intervention, particularly for families where long- term neglect, parental mental ill- health or domestic problems have permeated family life.

Giving social workers more options

We have widened the options available to social workers who hold decision-making powers and responsibility for safeguarding and support planning.

One social worker told us: “I think Fostering Families makes a valuable difference to the support networks that families have, where they otherwise wouldn’t have one. It can provide a positive role model for the children and parents to look up to; one who is often accepted more than an official professional would.”

Our experience is that social workers feel more positive about their work knowing they can work alongside Fostering Families carers and be a part of a solution that provides families with the love and comfort they need from people within their local community.

Filling a gap for families in need

Our approach is informed by theory, practice and the voices of families and workers.

The notion that long-term support may be provided until the children are grown does not always feel easy within a culture wary of creating dependence and concerned with eliminating risk.

And yet, the reason most families find themselves in the child protection system is because they lack someone safe to depend on.

Fostering Families has been successfully filling this gap, and the benefits are far-reaching for workers and families alike.

Vision for the future

We have a big vision for Fostering Families. We will continue to integrate our learning from the past three years, cementing this approach within B&NES.

We intend 15 families are matched for support by the end of 2024, increasing our capacity to make Fostering Families more widely available.

Our hope is to inspire social workers to showcase the work they are proud of, making it possible for others to adopt and share their ideas.

We want to spend the next year creating links and networks with people in our local community and colleagues in neighbouring authorities, creating new possibilities and alternatives to foster care for families across the country.

Zoe Ash is deputy team manager and Toni Mayo team manager for Fostering Families at Bath & North East Somerset. Social workers Peter Abbott and Anna Wilsher also contributed to the article.

Reference

Crittenden, P & Farnfield, S (2007). Fostering families: An integrative approach involving the biological and foster family systems. In RE Lee & JB Whiting (eds), Handbook of Relational Therapy for Foster Children and their Families (pp. 227-250). Child Welfare League of America.