The poor outcomes of young people leaving foster care are well documented and demand a focus on placement permanency and interventions that encourage stability (Rubin et al, 2007). The need for better support for foster carers is widely acknowledged (Warman, Pallet & Scott, 2006; Morgan & Baron, 2011). To provide effective support an understanding of foster carers support needs is required. A qualitative approach explored the support needs of foster carers who look after young people perceived to have emotional and behavioural difficulties. Semi- structured interviews were undertaken with 17 foster carers employed by a local authority or an Independent Fostering Agency. A grounded theory methodology within a social constructionist framework was used to develop a new theoretical understanding from the data. A central storyline of ‘keeping your head above water’ emerged and appeared to encapsulate daily struggles and ways of managing. Categories which contributed to this were ‘becoming isolated’ from other professionals, ‘role ambiguity’ regarding the multiple meanings attached to being a foster carer, ‘making sense of emotional and behavioural difficulties’ highlighting a need to understand the children cared for, ‘a focus on behaviours’ illuminating approaches to parenting and ‘unmet emotional needs’ which is a possible consequence of focussing on children’s behaviours. The emergent theory may hold potential for developing psychological formulations, interventions and training programmes for foster carers. Suggestions for future support are put forward based on the new theoretical framework. Applications of the findings to Counselling Psychology are discussed in detail.

The objective of the present study was to explore the experiences of New Zealand non-relative foster carers fostering children with attachment difficulties (indicative of disorders of non-attachment). This objective was achieved using a detailed Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith et al., 2009). Analysis revealed five themes evident in carer accounts: expectations versus reality; satisfactions and strains of fostering children with attachment difficulties; attachment relationships and the benefits of information; the impact of others on the caring experience; and negative expectations and future concerns. Overall, these themes suggest that fostering children with attachment difficulties is a complex and challenging experience which significantly impacts carers and their families. While lack of public understanding and public judgement compound the difficulty of the experience, receiving information about fostering and attachment difficulties appears to alleviate it. The five identified themes and their relation to the existing literature are explored in detail in this thesis. Implications for social policy and practice are discussed, and potential future research directions are outlined.

Appropriate long-term care arrangements for children whose birth families are unable or unwilling to raise them is one of the most critical issues confronting providers of children's social services. Knowing something of the longer term outcomes of different types of provision, the factors associated with differential outcomes and requirements for additional services will all assist in the development of practice and policy in this field. This document reports on a decade of publications arising from just such an applied programme of research, to which I have made a significant contribution in terms of research design, data collection, analysis of data and dissemination through both publication and other means. These publications represent a unique and original contribution to the field in terms of methodology and the analysis approach, the samples studied and the relevance of the findings to the policy and practice world. The majority of the publications focus on a sample of children placed for permanence during their middle childhoods, that is children placed between the ages of five and eleven years. This cohort was followed-up at one-and six-years after placement. Some of the findings from the early works were then explored in more depth in subsequent publications. The contribution to knowledge that is evidenced by these publications is reinforced by the use of longitudinal and prospective methods to address some of the weaknesses of previous work in this area. By focussing particularly on children placed during middle childhood, the works have added considerably to the knowledge base concerning permanent family placement for children. This is true not only in looking at disruption rates but also in terms of the factors associated with poorer outcomes among continuing placements in the short-and medium-term. In particular, several of the papers draw attention to the identification of what may prove to be a very important experience in the backgrounds of some looked after children -preferential rejection. This term has been coined to describe children who have been 'singled-out', within a sibling group, for negative attention from birth parents and who are alone in entering the care system. Although numbers were relatively small, the association between this experience and poor outcome in the later permanent placement was found to be highly significant, and held across time, within the samples studied. The papers, taken together, have also substantially informed the debate on likely support and intervention requirements of placed children and their new families and at least one of the selected publications has contributed specifically and significantly to government policy making.

No description available.

This study aims to examine how foster carers involved in the project Mentoring families experience the project overall, the support they receive and how they describe that the project has been put into practice. The data was collected by using qualitative interviews with six participants in the project, two mentoring families and four linked foster carers. The results have been analysed through a thematic analysis and then interpreted via the theoretic ideas about social support from peers. The study finds that foster carers have a positive experience of the project and that the support they receive is something they consider to be valuable for the role as foster carers. Another finding is that the project seems to be able to contribute to increased support. The results also show that the mentoring families have an important role for the possibility of putting the project into practice. The results indicate that some of the functions within the project were not implemented as fully as others, such as the network and planned sleepovers. Apart from these findings the study presents plausible risks about the project Mentoring families concerning the support given by non-professionals. / Mentorsfamiljer