Alyson Rees - Creating Stable Foster Placements: Learning from Foster Children and the Families Who Care For Them

Creating Stable Foster Placements

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Creating Stable Foster Placements

Learning from Foster Children and the Families Who Care For Them

Andy Pithouse and Alyson Rees

Foreword by Freda Lewis

Jessica Kingsley Publishers
London and Philadelphia

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The authors and the publisher apologise for any omissions and would be grateful if notified of any acknowledgements that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

First published in 2015

by Jessica Kingsley Publishers

73 Collier Street

London N1 9BE, UK

and

400 Market Street, Suite 400

Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA

www.jkp.com

Copyright Andy Pithouse and Alyson Rees 2015

Foreward Freda Lewis 2015

Front cover image source: Shutterstock.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 610 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Applications for the copyright owners written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher.

Warning: The doing of an unauthorised act in relation to a copyright work may result in both a civil claim for damages and criminal prosecution.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pithouse, Andy.

Creating stable foster placements : learning from foster children and the families who care from them / Andy Pithouse and Alyson Rees.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-84905-481-2 (alk. paper)

1. Foster children--Great Britain. 2. Foster parents--Great Britain. I. Rees, Alyson. II. Title.

HV887.G7P58 2014 362.7330941--dc23

2014015603

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84905 481 2

eISBN 978 0 85700 865 7

CONTENTS

Foreword

As someone with many years experience working in foster care, in policy development as the fostering policy manager for the Welsh Government, then as the director of The Fostering Network, it is with much enthusiasm that I write this forward to a book that captures in rich detail the often overlooked home world of foster carers, their children and the children they care for. The research presented in this book and the messages it gives are a timely reminder to all of us, who work to improve outcomes for looked after children, that it is attention to day to day living in a caring family home that can make the biggest difference to helping a child.

Across social care we increasingly encourage practitioners to work with the users of services to build on their strengths and focus on what they can do, not what they cant. Yet all we seem to read from research in the field of looked after children is the poor outcomes of this group. Thankfully, this book is very different, with the research taking a strengths-based perspective to explore the ways children in care and foster families can together create meaningful, stable and mutually enriching home environments.

The Care Inquiry of 2013 published the results of an extensive investigation on how best to provide stable and permanent homes for vulnerable children. The report into the inquirys findings, Making not Breaking, presents evidence from parents, relatives, adopters, special guardians, foster carers, residential workers, academics, policy people and managers and practitioners at all levels. Children and young people provided evidence via focus groups, online surveys and presented their views via film and in person to the inquiry.

The main conclusion was that permanence for children means security, stability, love and a strong sense of identity and belonging. The strong message to the inquiry was that it is the relationships with people who care for and about children that are the golden threads in childrens lives, and that the quality of a childs relationships is the lens through which all in the sector should view what we do and plan to do. It is precisely this hidden domain of the child becoming part of the foster family that the book reveals, in the way it captures those everyday events, activities and attachments that underpin caring relationships that deepen over time.

The research conducted by the authors is focused solely on the home setting and relationships therein and explores the everyday interactions that all families experience. For example, it looks at eating together and the social value of shared mealtimes, often an experience that looked after children have not had with their birth families. Indeed, I remember a foster carer telling me that several adults that she had fostered as children returned for a traditional lunch on Sunday and she regularly had a dozen people attending, continuing the ties made in her family. This book examines how such ties are first made and sustained. It addresses key issues around the childs sense of self and how clothing, bodily care, touch, private space, trusting relationships, tolerance and commitment, all in different ways, and at different times, shape and define the often invisible world of foster care.

From my own professional experience working for The Fostering Network in the UK I have long recognised the strong relationships that are made within foster families. The Fostering Network has a history of highlighting the valuable role that men, and sons and daughters of foster families play in foster care. Men can be foster carers alone or as a couple and have a huge role to play in demonstrating positive role models for children who may have had very little contact with men or may have only had negative experiences. The families in this study recognised the value of the males role and where there was no adult male partner often a son in the family would ensure they were involved with the fostered child.