Peu de recherches se sont intéressées à la scolarité des enfants confiés à une famille d’accueil. A de rares exceptions près, quand la scolarité est abordée dans les études, elle est analysée sous le versant des difficultés scolaires et de l’échec scolaire mais rarement en termes de réussite. Or, certains enfants confiés à une famille d’accueil s’accrochent à l’école et persévèrent dans leur scolarité jusqu’à l’obtention d’un niveau scolaire équivalent au moins au baccalauréat. Afin de comprendre les raisons de cet accrochage scolaire, nous interrogeons la question de la suppléance familiale en famille d’accueil et comment ce nouvel environnement « offert » à l’enfant redistribue les cartes du déterminisme social. Grâce aux témoignages de quarante personnes (jeunes et familles d’accueil), nous analysons les facteurs de protection qui permettent à ces jeunes de poursuivre leur scolarité malgré la présence de facteurs de risque dans leur parcours de vie. Nous étudions les rapports entre l’enfant confié, sa famille d’accueil et ses éducateurs notamment concernant la façon de gérer la question scolaire. L’accueil familial permet dans certains cas, à certains jeunes, de développer des liens forts avec une figure affective aux yeux de laquelle la scolarité est importante ce qui semble influencer la trajectoire scolaire des jeunes confiés. / Few research works have focussed on the academic achievement of children in foster care families. When the issue is investigated, it is mainly through the analysis of school difficulties and academic underachievement but rarely through academic success although some foster care children manage to do well at school and to carry on studying until they reach the equivalent of at least A-levels. To understand the underlying reasons behind this success, we will explore the question of corporate parenting in foster families, and how this new environment that is “offered” to the child can redistribute the cards of social determinism. Based on the analysis of forty face-to-face interviews with children who were in foster care, we identify some protective factors that will enable them to persevere in school despite adverse life conditions. We study the relationships between foster care children, their foster families, and their social workers, particularly with regards to the way they approach education. The foster care system in some instances allows children to develop strong bonds with an emotional figure, in the eyes of whom education is important, which seems to influence the academic trajectory of children in foster care.

This diploma thesis deals with the foster care for a temporary period. It examines how the legislation of this problamatics has changed since the reform in 2013 and how it is delivered into practice. The qualitative approach has been chosen for this research, using the primary and secondary data likewise. The primary data has been collected via semistructured interviews with three groups of respondents: the employees of OSPOD (the child's social and legal protection institutions in the foster care system), workers of nonprofit organization dealing with the foster care for a temporary period and parents for a temporary period. The respondents have been enquired with the questions based on the reviewed literature and articles. The whole system of the foster care for a temporary period, including its incorporation in legislation, is described in the text. The mentioned 2013 reform, important for the legislation too, is described as well. The theory of street-level bureaucracy and the theory of child development creates the academic basis for this thesis. The author first explains the implementation of the policy of the foster care for a temporary period, meaning the current setting and its real functioning. The biggest barriers for the accomplishment of the reform ambitions are mentioned together...

Substitutional child care is an indispensable part of system of social and legal protection of children. Until 1989, institutional care was preferred, while after the fall of communist government it had been gradually replaced by substitutional family care, because of the inappropriateness of institutional care to fully compensate for family environment. Deinstitutionalization means transforming the system of placing children to alternative care and it is understood as transition from institutional care to types of substitutional family care, eventually to more individual type of care with more family character. An amendment to the Social and Legal Children Protection Act, which aimed at transforming the system of substitutional care towards more individual work with endangered children, came into force in 2013. The amendment restored the institute of temporary foster care and modified the institute of long-term foster care. Moreover it set up system rules for the work of social and legal children protection authorities, it focused on prevention concerning endangered children etc. The goal of the thesis is to evaluate changes in the area of deinstitutionalization of substitutional child care in the Czech Republic after the amendment to the Social and Legal Children Protection Act from 2013, especially...

The purpose of this study has been to examine the construction of identities that are taking place when Swedish children and teenagers are, according to their local social services, in need of a family home. We have collected and analyzed data in the form of advertisement that is publicly available from the Swedish website Familjehemsbanken.se. It is a kind of marketplace that specializes as a go-between for the local social services in different Swedish municipalities and the presumptive local family homes. The descriptions of the children were looked at through a social constructionism lens where we identified patterns and different themes to which we assigned our own meanings or interpretations, based on the analyzed data and previous research and theories. What we found were broadly categorized into three themes; descriptions that were aiming to sell the kids to prospective buyers (family homes), descriptions that highlighted certain issues or problems that the child needed support with or descriptions that we considered neutral or ambivalent. As we conclude in the study, the descriptions in the last category could also be interpreted as either good or bad, depending on the reader and their own values and life experience. Our results show that even though child auctions (in essence: a form of economic slavery) were abolished in Sweden in 1918, today’s Swedish society are still dealing with socially vulnerable children as they – in practice – are still commodities on a marketplace. The methods and language may have changed, but the end result is still strikingly similar to what happened over a hundred years ago. One of the biggest challenges the authors faced was that it doesn’t exist any previous Swedish research on the subject at hand. We would argue, however, that the marketization of socially vulnerable children is an important issue that should be more deeply and thoroughly researched by further studies on the subject.

Youth who are placed in the Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care (MTFC) program come from families with multiple risk factors. The MTFC program is based on social learning theory, which posits that youth learn from modeling those in their environment. It is unclear whether motivation for social learning decreases over time. Past research has indicated that there is an efficacious time period for treatment in the MTFC program (6 to 9 months). The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the behavior effects of remaining in treatment foster care for an extended length of time. This was measured through pre- and posttreatment scores on the Children's Functional Assessment Rating Scale (CFARS) and specific negative behaviors tracked through the Foster Parent Daily Report. Archival data were used for a sample of 34 youth placed in an MTFC program in a northwestern state. The repeated measures ANOVA results demonstrated increased scores on the CFARS from intake to exit date. Regression analysis indicated that the behaviors of arguing and defiance were observed at higher instances for youth in the MTFC program longer than 6 to 9 months. There were no significant findings related to the behavior of destructiveness/vandalism and the length of stay. The implications for social change include social workers being able to move youth out of MTFC sooner. Also, if behaviors are targeted and treated successfully as youth, then there is a decreased likelihood of the youth having negative and criminal behavior as adults.

This study investigated the educational outcomes of foster care youth utilizing the Road to Independence, Adopted from DCF, and Relative Caregiver tuition exemptions to pursue enrollment in Florida's state college system during the 2012-2013 academic year. An extensive literature review was conducted to examine the history of foster care, examine a contemporary portrait of the American foster care system, and the adult outcomes of former foster care. Federal and state policies impacting the population, campus support initiatives at colleges nationwide and the concept of resilience were also explored. In conjunction with the Florida Department of Education's Division of Accountability, Research and Measurement, the Florida Department of Children and Families provided access to a dataset compiled by the Community College and Technical Center MIS department. This file contained enrollment information for foster care youth utilizing one of three tuition exemptions to fund their education-related expenses. While all personal identifiers were eliminated prior to sharing the file, information within the document included student age, gender, race/ethnicity, academic discipline, and degree being pursued. Results of this study yielded some statistically significant differences across tuition exemption type. After examining relationships between gender and race/ethnicity and tuition exemption type, no statistically significant results were found. However, statistical significance was found after examining the relationships between academic degree being pursued and academic major/discipline and tuition exemption type. Many factors impact the experiences of foster care youth in the college classroom. These should be considered when developing programming, policy, and support services aimed at encouraging their success.

As a social worker at the Desmond Tutu Child and Youth Care Centre in Gauteng province, the researcher noticed an increase in the number of applications for adolescents’ admission to the Centre due to a breakdown in their foster care placements. This raised a question regarding the factors contributing to this breakdown. The aim of the study was to develop an in-depth understanding of factors contributing to the breakdown of foster care placements from the perspectives of the adolescents who were fostered and from those of their foster parents. The qualitative research approach was used applying an explorative, descriptive and contextual design. Purposive sampling was used to select the participants. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews and was analysed according to the framework provided by Tesch (in Creswell, 2009:186). For data verification, Guba’s model (in Krefting (1990:214-220) was applied. Conclusions are drawn and recommendations made about foster care involving adolescents. / Social Work / M.A. (Social Work)

Short-term foster care is a fairly new form of substitute family care. Despite it having been incorporated in law since 2006, short-term foster care have only begun being employed seven years later. Only then the details of its administration were laid out in legislation. Purpose of this form of substitute family care is to prevent a placement of children into institutional care. It's possible to look at the professional foster care from different angles and thus assess it differently. Certainly, it has its positive and negative aspects as well as possible problems. It's undeniable that a well-functioning family is the best environment for raising and caring for a child. Forming an emotional bond is one of the most discussed factors contributing to the proper development of children placed in short-term foster care. Experts as well as the general public are looking for answers to the questions whether or not it's in the interest of the child to form an attachment to someone who's with them only for a short period of time, which children is professional foster care best suited for, whether children living in short-term foster care placements are less prone to suffer from emotional deprivation than children placed in institutional care or whether the duration of this form of foster care is sufficient. More questions arise over the degree of health care provided to infants placed with a professional forster family as well as over the level of risk of these children suffering traumas and stigmatizing experience compared to children living in institutional care. The objective of this thesis is to survey and assess the experience gained so far from implementing short-term foster care and to try and describe based on (previously) established facts how the children benefit from this form of substitute family care. In order to meet the set objective I chose a qualitative research strategy, the interview as a method, a semi-structured interview and a secondary analysis strategies. The results show that the most common reason for placing a child in this form of foster care is the impending adoption, i. e. it's mainly being used for infants whilst adoption placements are sorted out for them. To a lesser extent there are other reasons, respectively a minimum of older children are placed with professional foster families. Given these facts, it appears necessary to regard the short-term foster care differently depending on the age group of children placed in it. Undeniable merits of all cases of short-term foster care are an individual approach to each child that minimizes emotional deprivation and development of trauma, the development of the attachment behaviour and enough stimuli to influence a child's development. In the case of older children these are an experience of living in a well-functioning family and a positive educational impact. Developing an attachment between the child and the foster parent and then losing it because of the child's departure from a family is more risky for older children than newborns and toddlers. Claim that no attachment is to be formed between the child and the foster parent proved entirely unrealistic. The lack of permanent medical supervision can be seen as a disadvantage of professional foster care especially from the perspective of child welfare workers. Children placed for adoption often come from not monitored pregnancies or parents at-risk, i.e. these are children with unknown history whose development can therefore be risky, so they require a professional medical care in the first weeks of their lives. Research results have also indicated foster parents' positive motivation to professional fostering, an undisputed enrichment that this occupation brings their entire families and a satisfaction resulting from the meaningfulness of their work. The author believes that the institute of short-term foster care is undoubtedly very beneficial for a certain category of

As a social worker at the Desmond Tutu Child and Youth Care Centre in Gauteng province, the researcher noticed an increase in the number of applications for adolescents’ admission to the Centre due to a breakdown in their foster care placements. This raised a question regarding the factors contributing to this breakdown. The aim of the study was to develop an in-depth understanding of factors contributing to the breakdown of foster care placements from the perspectives of the adolescents who were fostered and from those of their foster parents. The qualitative research approach was used applying an explorative, descriptive and contextual design. Purposive sampling was used to select the participants. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews and was analysed according to the framework provided by Tesch (in Creswell, 2009:186). For data verification, Guba’s model (in Krefting (1990:214-220) was applied. Conclusions are drawn and recommendations made about foster care involving adolescents. / Social Work / M.A. (Social Work)

The presence of poverty, unemployment and children been infected or affected by HIV/Aids contributed to a high level of children in need of care and protection (Patel, 2005:165) and forced communities to came up with a ways of addressing this increasing need of alternative care. Cluster foster care schemes were one of the initiatives that were started spontaneously by community members to address need for more alternative care options (Colby-Newton, 2006:18). This form of alternative care was also included with the proclamation of the Children’s Act, 38 of 2005 and the Children’s Amendment Act, Act 41 of 2007 (Matthias, 2010:172-176). Although cluster foster care schemes are acknowledge and practice as a form of alternative care for children in need of care and protection the operationalising thereof remain a grey area. In an unpublished study by Taback and Associates, it was suggested that further research should be conducted regarding elements that need to be included in the operationalising of cluster foster care schemes (Taback and Associates, 2010:4). The above form the motivation for this study and also provide the basis for the formulation of the research question namely: “What are the operational elements necessary for the operationalising of cluster foster care schemes?” Following from the research problem and research question, the goal for this research was to explore and describe the present functioning of cluster foster care schemes in order to identify operational elements to be documented in a guideline for service providers and social workers. The researcher made use of qualitative research approach to explore and describe the participants’ perception on the research problem. This research endeavour firstly falls in the ambit of the phenomenology research design, which aimed to describe the conscious experience of the everyday life of the participants, which were in this study the managers of cluster foster care schemes as well as foster parents that provide foster care as part of a cluster foster care scheme. In addition to this the researcher also opted to include the exploratory, descriptive and contextual research design, which guided the exploration, description and contextualising of the views of the participants on elements needed to operationalise cluster foster care schemes. In order to achieve the above the researcher the researcher decided to make use of an intervention research model by Rothman and Thomas (1994:3-51), namely the “Intervention Develop and Design” framework (IDD framework). In this study the researcher only used phases one to phase four and certain steps of the IDD framework to develop the operational guidelines for the operationalising of cluster foster care schemes. In concluding the report of the study, the researcher provided summaries of and conclusions related to the background rational; research questions; goals and task objective of the study; the research methodology implemented; the empirical findings and literature consulted; and the developed operational guidelines. He concluded the document with recommendation related to the research process and methodology employed; research findings; and recommendation for further research on the research topic. / Social Work / D. Soc.Sc. (Social Work)