Syftet med studien har varit att öka kunskapen om biologiska barns perspektiv på konflikter och konflikthantering samt att undersöka rollens betydelse för konflikter i och med ett familjehemsuppdrag. Behovet av studien baserades på att konflikter mellan biologiska barn och familjehemsplacerade barn är en vanlig orsak till sammanbrott. Uppsatsen har en kvalitativ ansats som utgått från semistrukturerade intervjuer med åtta respondenter i åldrarna 18-28 år. Respondenterna delar den gemensamma erfarenheten om vad det innebär att vara biologiskt barn i ett familjehem. Studien har sin teoretiska utgångspunkt i ett barndomssociologiskt perspektiv och resultatet tolkades tematiskt och analyserades sedan med hjälp av konflikt-och konflikthanteringsperspektiv samt rollteori. Resultatet visar att de företeelser och situationer biologiska barn behöver förhålla sig till inom ramen för familjehemsuppdraget innefattar system-, mellanmänskliga-och individuella konflikter, där individuella konflikter visat sig mest framträdande i form av ambivalenta känslor och samvetskval. Studien visar också att biologiska barn hanterar konflikter på olika sätt. De synliga hanteringsstilarna är undvikande, anpassande, kompromissande och samarbetande, där undvikande och anpassande visat sig mest framträdande. Resultatet visar vidare att biologiska barn intar olika roller i familjehemsuppdraget som innefattas av ansvar och deltagande på olika sätt, vilket kan resultera i olika individuella konflikter. Respondenterna i studien berättar också att antingen mer stöd från familjen eller stöd utifrån hade gynnat deras upplevelse av familjehemsuppdraget. / The purpose of the study has been to increase the knowledge about biological children's perspective on conflicts and conflict management, as well as to study the importance of the role of conflicts in foster families. The need for the study was based on the fact that conflicts between biological children and foster children are a common cause of cancelation of fostering in foster families. The essay has a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews with eight respondents aged 18-28. Respondents share the common experience about what it means to be a biological child in a foster family. The study has its theoretical point of view in a childhood sociological perspective and the result was interpreted thematically and then analyzed using conflict and conflict management perspectives as well as role theory. The results show that the phenomena and situations thatbiological children need to relate to within the context of being part of a foster family include systemic, interpersonal and individual conflicts, whereas individual conflicts have been shown to be most prominent in terms of ambivalent feelings and compunction. The study also shows that biological children handle conflicts in different ways. The visible management styles are avoiding, adaptive, compromising and collaborative, where avoiding and adapting proved most prominent. The result further shows thatbiological children occupy different roles in the foster family, which is comprised of responsibility and participation in different ways, which can result in different individual conflicts. The respondents in the study also says that either more support from the family or support from outside would have benefited their experience of being a foster family.

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80–20 rule, is the observation that 20% of input (e.g., workers) produce 80% of the results. Consistent with this principle, previous research has identified a group (20%) of families, the Vital Few, who provide a disproportionate amount of foster care and are more willing to foster children with special needs. The ability to predict the emergence of these families has important implications for recruitment, support and placement stability, as well as longevity of foster families. This study replicated and extended previous research by conducting a follow-up study of 107 families (90% response rate) 17 years after pre-service training. Consistent with previous research we found a small proportion (10%) of families who provide a disproportionate amount of care in terms of length of service and number of children fostered, approved to foster, adopted, and removed at families’ request. At the completion of pre-service training Vital Few families were more likely to have had previous foster parent experience and one or more children in their homes; mothers and fathers in the Vital Few were older, and fathers reported less education. Also, at pre-service training more Vital Few families said they would foster sibling groups (100 vs. 64%), but there were no other differences in terms of willingness to foster children with special needs. This study further validates the utility of the Pareto Principle for understanding foster families and, by extension, has important implications for the well-being and stability of foster children.

There is a small, methodologically diverse body of research indicating that approximately 20% of families provide disproportionate amounts of foster caregiving, place fewer restrictions on characteristics of children they are willing to foster and actually do foster, and provide caregiving environments as good as or better than those provided by other foster families. Cherry and Orme (2013) conceptualized this phenomenon in terms of the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80-20 rule or the Vital Few, and they refer to these 20% of families as the Vital Few and the remaining 80% as the Useful Many. This review will examine and synthesize the available research on Vital Few foster families and explore next steps in the development of this body of research.

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80-20 rule or the Vital Few, has been successfully used as a framework to identify the small proportion of highly productive foster parents who provide a disproportionate amount of care. This study replicated and extended this research using a nationally representative sample of foster families ( N=. 876) with a focus on willingness to foster, and actually fostering, children with special needs. Using latent class analysis, two classes of foster parents were identified: one accounted for 19% of respondents and the other 81%. We refer to the former as the Vital Few and the latter as the Useful Many. Vital Few respondents fostered 74.2% of foster children - 11 times more than the Useful Many, although only fostering two times longer. They also had almost 1-1/2 times as many foster children in their homes at the time of the study. Notably, the Vital Few were willing to foster more types of children with special needs and a higher percentage had actually fostered children with each of the seven types of special needs studied. The classes were similar demographically except that Vital Few respondents were less likely to work outside the home and Vital Few mothers were slightly less educated as compared to Useful Many mothers. This study further validates the utility of the Pareto Principle for understanding foster parents and, by extension, has important implications for the well-being and stability of foster children with special needs. Considerations for supporting the Vital Few, including education and training needs, are discussed.

In this article, the authors present the Willingness to Foster Scale - Disabilities and Medical Conditions (WFS-DMC) and report results concerning its psychometric properties. The WFS-DMC is a new measure designed to accurately and efficiently assess the willingness of parents to foster children with special needs, in particular, disabilities and special medical conditions. The authors tested the WFS-DMC with a national sample of 298 foster mothers. Internal consistency reliability was excellent (α =. 90). With reference to construct validity, mothers with higher WFS-DMC scores fostered longer, fostered and adopted more children, and requested the removal of a smaller proportion of foster children. Furthermore, the mothers' WFS-DMC scores were unrelated to demographic characteristics. The WFS-DMC could help guide the decision-making process involved in matching children who have special needs with parents willing to care for them.

Syftet med studien är att belysa socialsekreterarnas perspektiv på det stöd de kan ge till familjehem samt om de ansåg att det finns stöd som kan motverka sammanbrott. Tidigare forskning vi belyser tar upp familjehemmens perspektiv på stöd. Forskningen visar att de ibland upplever socialsekreterarna som otillgängliga och att de saknar stöd för att klara sitt uppdrag. De centrala frågorna i denna studie är vilket stöd som socialsekreterare kan ge familjehem samt om det finns något specifikt stöd som kan minska risken för sammanbrott. I studien intervjuades tio stycken socialsekreterare från olika arbetsplatser i Stockholmsområdet. Detta är en kvalitativ studie som analyserats med hjälp utifrån Bronfenbrenners utvecklingsekologiska teori. Studiens resultat visar att respondenterna upplever att det stöd som finns är tillräckligt, att de har gott om handlingsutrymme och även att stöd till familjehem går att individanpassa. Enligt respondenterna är det flera saker som behövs för att minska risken för sammanbrott, exempelvis är det viktigt med väl genomförda utredningar av familjehemmen och att en god matchning mellan barnet och det tilltänkta familjehemmet sker. Studien uppmärksammar vikten av att se till helheten för att lyckas med hållbara placeringar. / The purpose of the study is to highlight social workers' perspectives on the support they can provide to foster families and whether they believed that there is support that can prevent breakdown. Previous research highlighted the foster family's perspective on support, showing that they sometimes experience social workers as inaccessible and lack of support to manage their responsibilities. The central questions in this study are what kind of support social workers can provide to foster families and whether there is specific support that can reduce the risk of breakdown. Ten social workers from various workplaces in the Stockholm area were interviewed in the study. This is a qualitative study that has been analyzed using Bronfenbrenner's ecological development theory. The study's results show that the respondents believe that the available support is sufficient, that they have plenty of room for action, and that support to foster families can be tailored to individual needs. According to the respondents, several things are needed to reduce the risk of breakdown, such as well-conducted investigations of the foster family and a good matching between the child and the intended foster family. The study highlights the importance of considering the overall situation to succeed with sustainable placements.

Vid brister i föräldraförmågan, där modern inte kan se till att sitt barn får de grundläggande behoven tillgodosedda tvingas hon ibland till familjehemsplacering av sitt barn enligt Socialtjänstlagen (SoL, SFS 2001:453) eller enligt Lag med särskilda bestämmelser om vård av unga (LVU, SFS 1990:52). Dessa mödrar har enligt lag rätt till stöd för att bearbeta de känslor som kan uppstå vid denna typ av trauma. Mödrar med egna erfarenheter, exempel Widerlöv (2012) och Trullson (2008) har skrivit // artiklar och böcker där de berättar om att mödrar kan drabbas av känslor som skuld, skam och sorg, och att de har ett behov av stöd i samband med familjehemsplaceringarna.Studien är gjord efter en kvalitativ metod med ett induktivt förhållningssätt. För att kunna besvara studiens syfte och svara på frågeställningarna har sju semi-strukturerade intervjuer med biologiska mödrar genomförts.I resultatet har det framkommit att alla mödrar utom en är missnöjd det stöd som de har erbjudits. Det handlar både om att de inte har blivit erbjudna stöd och att det har varit fel sorts stöd för dem. Andra viktiga aspekter som har framkommit i resultatet är mödrarnas känsla av sorg när deras barn blir familjehemsplacerade, den nya föräldrarollen som uppstår, att socialtjänsten har ett barnperspektiv vid utredningar och beslut samt vilken typ av stöd mödrarna önskar. Detta analyseras sedan med hjälp av den tidigare forskningen som har hittats inom ämnet och med hjälp av Fyhrs sorgteori samt anknytningsteorin. I slutet av uppsatsen presenteras de slutsatser författarna har kommit fram till och en diskussion om dessa. / In lack of parenting skills, where the biological mother can´t give her child its fundamental needs, they´re sometimes forced to place their children into foster homes according to the Swedish law. The two laws who decide if the social services need to help the child is the law of social services (SoL, SFS 2001:453) or the law with special provision about care of children and youth (LVU, SFS 1990:52). These mothers have according to the law the right to get support from the social services to handle the feelings that can come up in these types of trauma. Mothers with direct experience, for example Widerlöv (2012) och Trullson (2008), have written books and articles where they explain that mothers suffer feelings like quilt, shame and sorrow. Therefore they really need the support from the social services. This study is made out of a qualitative and inductive method and to answer the questions of this study, seven semi-structured interviews with biological mothers have been made.In the result the reader can see that all mothers except one are not satisfied with the support that they´ve been offered. It´s both that they haven´t been offered support and that it has been the wrong kind of support for them. There are other important aspects shown in the result which is for example the mothers sorrow when their children move to a foster family, the new role of parenting, and the sorrow for the mothers that the social services works in the perspective of children in investigations and decisions, and what type of support the mother has the right to get. In the analysis the results connects to research related to this subject and the theory of sorrow by Fyhr and the attachment theory. The writers will in the end of this essay account about the conclusions of this study and follow that up with a discussion.

This Diploma Thesis deals with the description of the ethical dilemmas faced by personnel attached to the foster family. The first part is devoted to the family, because that is the target group with which the attached person supervising the worker works. The second part deals with foster care, in particular, its legislative definition. This definition determines the boundaries within which the worker moves. Next, I explain, what is the legislation of our country, related to foster care, based on. The third chapter describes what should the attached personnel be like and what is included in their work performance. The next chapter presents dilemmas for workers, which I found, on the basis of qualitative research using interviews with staff. The final, fifth chapter is devoted to the analysis of selected ethical dilemma from the perspective of ethics I. Kant and utilitarianism.

The diploma thesis discusses the impact of foster care on biological children of foster parents from the perspective of foster parents, biological children of foster parents and experts in their work with the issue of foster care encounter. Aim of this work is to propose options for social work with biological children of applicants for foster care in the way they are not negatively affected. Key words: foster care, biological children of foster parents, accompanying foster families, preparing for foster care

In my diploma work I concentrated on various forms of work with foster-families focused on prevention, consultancy and special help. Regional authorities are obliged to arrange them as a part of so-called consultations on foster care practice according to para. 4 of section 11 of Act No.359/1999 Coll. on Social and Legal protection of children. I tried to map the way the particular regional authorities fill this paragraph. In more detail I attended to activity of south-bohemian regional authority in this field. In terms of the research I found that the importance of foster-families meetings consists in experience exchange, feeling of sharing and gaining new information. From that point of view more days meetings are the most popular with both fosterers and social workers when there is more time for it.