The transition to adulthood can be especially challenging for youth that experience the foster care system. These challenges are magnified for youth that also experience disability, accounting for at least 40-47% of all children in foster care. Youth with and without disabilities that experience the foster care system encounter barriers during the transition to adulthood that often lead to poor outcomes; including high rates of mobility, mental health concerns, or a lack of a consistent positive relationship with an adult. A national study determined that 2.5 to 4 years after a youth has aged out of the child welfare system only 54% had graduated from high school and only 17% were economically self sufficient. In order to move from a deficit-based to a strength-based approach it is important to gain a greater understanding of what helped young adults with disabilities that experienced foster care overcome barriers to graduation and aided their transition to adulthood. The findings from this dissertation study suggest and confirm prior research that improved systems and interagency collaboration, more training for professionals and caregivers, and self-determination and self-advocacy training for youth are needed to improve post school outcomes for youth with disabilities who experience foster care. The services and supports that were perceived as the most helpful in overcoming barriers were (a) access to mental health and disability services, (b) stable and positive relationships, (c) systems that provide a "safety net" during transition, and (d) post secondary support programs for alumni of foster care. On an individual level, resilience, self-determination, and self-advocacy seemed to contribute to participants' successful transition to adulthood. This dissertation study also demonstrates the variability of the social and relational contexts for youth in foster care, therefore a personalized, youth centered approach to case management is required during their transition to adulthood.

My work is engaged in the problems of foster care. In the primary phase of my diploma work i target on the arev in which the readers are acquainted with the concrete phases of foster care. Every applicant must pass this period to get the child in his her foster care. In my work there are involved the basic ideas and rules, that foster care relies on. In my research there are presentech opinions of fosters who hud to pass these phases. The main idea of my research was to jind out the fulings of fosters and their suggestions in the frocens of foste care.

[pt] A presente dissertação visa discutir o processo e a prática de acolhimento familiar, onde crianças e adolescentes, normalmente, são vítimas de violência doméstica. O acolhimento, enquanto apoio social, ocorre no Brasil desde os tempos de colonização, porém nos atemos somente aos casos mediados pelo poder público ocorridos depois da promulgação do Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente, ou seja, a partir da década de 1990. Especificamente no período de 1997 a 2005. Por acolhimento familiar entende-se: a prática que leva a um sujeito, criança, adolescente ou adulto a conviver como membro transitório ou definitivo de outra família que não é a família na qual nasceu conforme define a psicóloga Argentina Matilde Luna (2001:17). Pode ser considerado uma alternativa à institucionalização para algumas crianças e adolescentes quando se pensa no seu caráter provisório e transitório. Vale ressaltar que é um processo amplo e diferenciado de acordo com a sociedade e cultura em questão. As questões que norteiam nossa análise estão relacionadas aos aspectos que parecem aumentar a probabilidade de permanência de crianças e adolescentes em sua família de origem após a participação em um processo formal1 de acolhimento familiar. Esses aspectos não foram anteriormente problematizados pelos programas aos quais tivemos acesso. Utilizamos as categorias violência doméstica e acolhimento familiar. Para alcançar os objetivos foram entrevistados diversos atores envolvidos no processo de acolhimento familiar: famílias, técnicos e gestores dos projetos. Foram escolhidas quatro regiões do município do Rio de Janeiro e ouvidos representantes de projetos situados em outras cinco localidades do país2: Belo Horizonte- MG, Franca-SP, São Bento do Sul - SC, Campinas-SP e São Paulo-SP. Os resultados aqui encontrados estão dentro do limite do nosso escopo de pesquisa possibilitando a resposta a algumas perguntas e discussão de suposições. / [en] The paper in focus aims to discuss the process and practice of the foster care where children and teenagers are usually victims of the household violence. The foster care as a social support has been taken place in Brazil since the colonial period. But we are only going to study the cases under the public power that have been happened after the Child and Teenager Statute, since 1990. Only from 1997 to 2005. Foster care means the practice that takes a guy, a child, a teenager or an adult to deal with a passing or permanent member from another family, someone that is not from the family where he or she was born, according to Matilde Luna´s opinion, a psychologist from Argentina. It can be considered as an alternative from institutionalization for some children and teenager when it´s temporary and transitory. It´s a large and different process according to the society and culture. Our analyses are related to the aspects that may increase the permanence probability in the original family after they have been had under a formal3 foster care. These aspects have not been studied through the programs we´ve attended. Household violence and foster care were the categories used. To reach our goals we interviewed several actors involved in the foster care process: families, technicians and other people who are engaged in the projects. Four regions from Rio de Janeiro and another five4 different regions in Brazil where chosen in our research. The results found are within our reach. We may answer some questions and discuss about everything.

This dissertation addresses gaps in the child welfare literature from a systemic perspective. The extant literature focuses primarily on children in care, which excludes 90% of children and families involved with the system. In addition, foster parent retention has become an area of primary concern because there are fewer individuals who are willing to foster. Research that examines all children involved with the child welfare system and ways to improve foster parent experiences is imperative to address these areas of need. The two studies herein address these gaps in the literature by examining children who are in contact with the child welfare system but largely remain out of care, children who are in care, and foster caregivers. The first study compared two groups of children in the Ontario child welfare system: those who remain with their natural family and those in out-of-home care. The emotional and behavioural functioning, prosocial behaviour, education, health, and resources (internal and external) of these two groups of children were examined and relatively few significant differences were identified. However, it was found that, despite having comparable mental health and educational functioning, children who remained in their natural homes had significantly fewer external resources than children in out-of-home care. Children in out-of-home care may have increased access to community resources despite having similar needs to children who remain in their natural home environments. Additional research is needed to replicate and better understand these findings so that the child welfare system can best meet the needs of its children. The second study examined how foster child characteristics, as well as other foster parent and agency factors, impact Canadian foster parents’ experience of fostering, particularly related to agency workers, the fostering system, training, and foster children and their placements. Results identified that foster children’s needs and maltreatment histories, as reported by foster parents, were not significantly associated with perceptions about fostering. The factors that were the most highly associated with positive perceptions about fostering were increased practical and emotional support. These findings indicate that child welfare agencies can improve foster parents perceptions about fostering by providing sufficient practical and emotional support. A monitoring system that allows foster parents to provide regular feedback would be beneficial in continuing to evaluate their fostering experiences, assess the impact of interventions targeting foster parent support, and address any areas of concern. As a whole, the results of this dissertation highlight the importance of providing both children and foster parents in the child welfare system with appropriate supports that promote positive child functioning and foster parent experiences.

Children in care (e.g., foster care) are at risk of a variety of negative developmental outcomes. Of particular concern are their often poor academic outcomes. Indeed, children in care often have below grade-level performance on math and reading, increased rates of school drop out, and learning disabilities. Despite these difficulties, relatively little research has been conducted to try to ameliorate the problem. The present thesis, consisting of three independent randomized controlled trials (RCTs), sought to address the need for improved educational outcomes for children in care. The first RCT was an evaluation of a one-on-one tutoring program, TutorBright. Children in care were randomized to either a tutoring group or a waitlist control group and assessed on their math and reading skills, as well as on other educationally relevant domains (executive functioning, behaviour, and caregiver involvement in school-related activities), pre and post test. ANCOVA via multiple regression revealed that the children in care that had received tutoring, compared to the waitlist control group, made significantly greater gains in reading comprehension (Hedges’ g = 0.34), reading fluency (g = 0.16), and math calculation (g = 0.39). Moreover, executive functioning and self-reported symptoms of PTSD (for older children) were significant moderators of the effects of tutoring. No significant spill-over effects of tutoring were found. The second RCT, building upon previous RCTs by Flynn et al. (2012) and Harper and Schmidt (2016), evaluated whether a shorter version (i.e., 15 weeks) of a one-on-one Direct Instruction tutoring program, Teach Your Children Well (TYCW), was as effective as a longer version of TYCW (i.e., 25 weeks) on improving the math and reading skills for children in care. ANCOVA via multiple regression did not reveal any significant group differences in academic performance for any of the WJ-III subtests. Collapsing across the two intervention conditions, follow-up paired samples t-tests revealed significant improvement in Letter-Word Identification (Cohen’s d = 0.22), Reading Fluency (d = 0.36), Calculation (d = 0.38), Math Fluency (d = 0.47), Applied Problems (d = 0.30), and Broad Reading (d = 0.30) and Broad Math (d = 0.40) composite scores, suggesting that the 15-week and 25-week TYCW programs were equally effective in improving math and reading skills. Moreover, an attribute-treatment interaction analysis revealed that children with higher executive functioning benefited more from the shorter tutoring dosage for Calculation. The third RCT was a small pilot study that aimed to assess whether working-memory training (WMT) can enhance: 1) working memory capacity, in the short and longer term (i.e., immediately following the completion of WMT and 6-months later), 2) symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (i.e., inattention, hyperactivity, and executive functioning) in the short and longer term, and, 3) math and reading skills at 6-months post WMT. The findings from this study suggested that WMT can improve verbal working memory (g = 0.35) as well as visuo-spatial short-term memory (g = 1.10) in the shorter term but not in the longer term. Moreover, WMT did not have a significant impact on improving symptoms of ADHD or math and reading skills. Together, the results of this dissertation indicate that the math and reading skills of children in care can be improved via tutoring. The findings highlight the importance of providing children in care with effective academic supports in order to help them reach their full potential.

Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich vor allem mit dem Thema der Pflegschaft, sowie mit den anderen Formen der Pflege um das Kind. In der Arbeit werden die Entwicklung und die rechtliche Regelung der Pflegschaft behandelt. Die Entstehung der Pflegeförderung tritt auf, wenn die leiblichen Eltern gehindert sind, sich um ihr eigenes Kind kümmern zu können. Diese Hindernisse können kurzfristiger oder dauerhafter Natur sein. Die Pflegschaft kann in die individuelle Pflege und Gruppenpflege unterteilt werden. Ein Beispiel für die Gruppenpflege sind die SOS-Kinderdörfer. Wenn das Kind einer fremden Person anvertraut wird, steht am Anfang des ganzen Prozesses die Eintragung des Antragstellers in das Register, weiter folgt die Phase der Vorbereitung und dann die Vermittlung der Pflege. Die Rechte und Pflichten der Pflegeeltern sind durch das Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch und durch das Gesetz über den Sozial- rechtlichen Schutz des Kindes bestimmt. Die Grundpflicht der Pflegeeltern sowie ihr Grundrecht bestehen darin, sich um das Kind so persönlich zu kümmern, dass es sich gut entwickelt. Die Pflegeeltern sind dazu verpflichtet, die leiblichen Eltern über die Entwicklung des Kindes zu informieren, denn über alle wesentlichen Dinge wird von den leiblichen Eltern entschieden, beziehungsweise, wenn das Kind kein Elternteil hat, vom...

Magister Artium (Social Work) - MA(SW) / Despite remarkable strides being made in legislation in South Africa, the country still faces immense challenges which directly impact on the care and protection of its children. Many children are removed from their families and placed into alternative care because of high risk factors in the family and community. However, because of the socioeconomic situations of families, many of these children will not be able to return to their family. It is, therefore, essential that in the residential care programme, efforts are directed towards permanency planning for each child in order to ensure long term placement in a family. The host parent programme which has been introduced at Child and Youth Care Centres (CYCCs) acts as a precursor to foster-care placements. Following on this, host parents provide the child in need of care with opportunities to interact and form positive relationships with adult caregivers. This study has explored and described, by means of qualitative research, the experiences of host parents who accommodated children in need of care. Nine host parents were purposively selected from three participating CYCCs in Athlone, Cape Town. Data was collected by means of semi-structured individual interviews. The data was analysed according to the steps by Tesch in Creswell (2009). The findings suggest that host parents are instrumental to those children who cannot return to their natural families. The host parents’ interaction with the CYCC was both positive and negative at times. Recommendations and guidelines in order to develop and improve existing hosting programmes at CYCC’s are provided. / South Africa

Unfavourable socio-economic and psychosocial changes, globally and locally, have forced communities to place an increasing number of adolescents in foster care, or take the necessary steps to accommodate them in orphanages. The drastic interventions had many unsettling consequences. South African orphanages were inundated with orphaned and removed children, and foster care was a constructive alternative. Research results have shown that, for children to develop normally, they have to be cared for in cordial and constructive family structures (Republic of South Africa, Department of Social Development, 2009). The present study was exploratory and aimed to explore the challenges faced by foster mothers who were fostering the adolescents at the time of interviewing, as well as coping strategies employed by foster mothers in their task of fostering. The target areas were Mamelodi and Atteridgeville Townships in the Tshwane/Pretoria Region. Twenty foster mothers were selected from a list of foster mothers received from social workers and semi-structured interviews were conducted with these 20 respondents. Respondents? narratives were translated from Setswana and North Sotho to English. Data was transcribed and analysed by means of Thematic Network Analysis. Four core themes were extracted, namely Crisis, Structure, Relationships, and Resilience and Spirituality. These themes were discussed and linked to the tenets of Positive Psychology and literature sources, and communicated to social workers, foster mothers and legislators. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Psychology / PhD / Unrestricted

abstract: In the first chapter, I study the two-sided, dynamic matching problem that occurs in the United States (US) foster care system. In this market, foster parents and foster children can form reversible foster matches, which may disrupt, continue in a reversible state, or transition into permanency via adoption. I first present an empirical analysis that yields four new stylized facts related to match transitions of children in foster care and their exit through adoption. Thereafter, I develop a two-sided dynamic matching model with five key features: (a) children are heterogeneous (with and without a disability), (b) children must be foster matched before being adopted, (c) children search for parents while foster matched to another parent, (d) parents receive a smaller per-period payoff when adopting than fostering (capturing the presence of a financial penalty on adoption), and (e) matches differ in their quality. I use the model to derive conditions for the stylized facts to arise in equilibrium and carry out predictions regarding match quality. The main insight is that the intrinsic disadvantage (being less preferred by foster parents) faced by children with a disability exacerbates due to the penalty. Moreover, I show that foster parents in high-quality matches (relative to foster parents in low-quality matches) might have fewer incentives to adopt. In the second chapter, I study the Minnesota's 2015 Northstar Care Program which eliminated the adoption penalty (i.e., the decrease in fostering-based financial transfers associated with adoption) for children aged six and older, while maintaining it for children under age six. Using a differences-in-differences estimation strategy that controls for a rich set of covariates, I find that parents were responsive to the change in direct financial payments; the annual adoption rate of older foster children (aged six to eleven) increased by approximately 8 percentage points (24% at the mean) as a result of the program. I additionally find evidence of strategic adoption behavior as the adoption rate of younger children temporarily increased by 9 percentage points (23% at the mean) while the adoption rate of the oldest children (aged fifteen) temporarily decreased by 9 percentage points (65% at the mean) in the year prior to the program's implementation. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Economics 2019

Magister Artium (Child and Family Studies) - MA(CFS) / In South Africa family foster care is the first option of alternative care for children removed from their biological parents, adoptive parents or guardians, due to neglect, abuse or abandonment. Similar to international trends, South Africa prioritises family foster care. However, when the foster care placement disintegrates, children are generally placed in child and youth care centres (CYCCs) in accordance with the South African Children’s Act 38 of 2005. This qualitative study aims to explain the adverse childhood experiences of adults regarding their transition from foster care to CYCCs, using family systems theory (FST) to contextualise these accounts. The population for this study was adults living in Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB), who were formerly moved to CYCCs after the break down of their family foster care placements.