Social Work and Foster Care. Helen Cosis Brown
worker (SSW). I wanted to write about the interrelationship between foster care and social work because, other than best practice guidance, the interface between the two has attracted little research, or scholarly attention. The intended readers of the book are: SSWs, foster carers, fostering service managers, students on a qualifying or post-qualifying social work degree, foster children's social workers or managers in children's social services.
Goodyer writes:
As with other areas of social work, knowledge about fostering comes from a variety of sources: practice wisdom, individual retrospective accounts, rhetoric about what ought to happen, and also from research.
(Goodyer, 2011, p49)
This book is a contribution to the ‘knowledge’ we have about social work and foster care, and falls into Goodyer's category of ‘rhetoric about what ought to happen’; informed by relevant published ‘knowledge’, and my practice experience prior to 1989 and since 2005.
I approached writing the book from three perspectives, informed by my experience of: first, chairing fostering panels since 1998; second, chairing foster carer reviews, as an independent reviewing officer since 2005; and third as a social work academic since 1989. In writing the book I have drawn from research findings, scholarly texts, best practice guidance, and mine and others’ practice experience. My theoretical orientation draws on psychodynamic understanding, systemic ideas and social learning theory to inform specific interventions.
Foster Care
It is generally agreed that human beings have been ‘doing’ foster care, in the sense that adults have cared for other people's children, when those children have not been able to live with their birth parents, for millennia. However, the start of ‘formal’, paid fostering is unclear; the origins of fostering are confused and obscured by the mists of history (Thomas and Philpot, 2009, p15). Foster care's explicit naming, categorisation and regulation are more recent than the ‘mists of history’. Smith writes:
The foundations of foster care in the United Kingdom (UK) lie in the apprenticeships that were established by means of the Poor Law of 1536 and the practice of wet nursing that emerged during the early part of the 19th century.
(Smith, 2011, p9)
The beginnings of the formalisation of foster care, as we would recognise it today, have been associated with the use of foster carers by: the Thomas Coram Foundling Hospital established in 1741; Reverend Armistead in Cheshire in 1853; Mrs Hannah Archer in Swindon around the same time; Dr Barnardo; and Thomas Bowman Stephenson, who was the founder of Action for Children, the then National Children's Home and Orphanage. Foster care in the late nineteenth century had become so ubiquitous that, for example, by 1891 a third of children cared for by Barnardo's were fostered (Thomas and Philpot, 2009).
Barnardo's, early on in the development of foster care, had its own equivalent to the later Government Boarding-out Regulations, to make sure that children were kept safe in foster homes. Echoes of these early regulations can be identified in the United Kingdom's (UK) 1933, 1947, 1955, 1988 and 2002, and England's 2011 and 2013 Regulations governing foster care. In each, reference was made to fostering services (or their then equivalent) being required to assess a person's ‘suitability’ to foster children. The need to assess ‘suitability’ was triggered, in part, by the ‘baby farming’ scandals of the nineteenth century, and the hanging of Margaret Waters in 1870 for the murder of one of the children she fostered for payment. The need to comprehensively assess prospective foster carers was re-visited by Sir Walter Monkton in his inquiry report, after the death of Dennis O'Neill, killed by his foster parents in 1945 (Home Office, 1945).
In recent research about people's motivations to foster, and barriers that prevent them fostering, concern about the stigma still associated with foster care, and a person receiving payment for caring for other people's children, was identified as a barrier for some people applying to be foster carers. Worries about being seen to profit from caring for children remains a barrier for some people applying to be foster carers (McDermid, Holmes, Kirton and Signoretta, 2012, p6). This concern can be traced back to the above events in foster care's history, which remain in our collective memories.
From a non-State controlled beginning, foster care has been transformed, in recent times, into a highly regulated activity. We currently have a mixed economy of providers of foster care including local authorities, not-for-profit and for-profit fostering services (Sellick, 2011).
Foster carers now receive regular supervision from their SSWs, to ensure that they work effectively with others responsible for the realisation of a foster child's care plan: providing a warm, facilitative, stimulating, family environment, and the enabling direct care needed to help that foster child reach their potential and be well cared for during their time in foster care. Today foster care can provide both a secure base for a child, and what I refer to as ‘reparatory family care’, when that is needed. Foster care, at its most basic function, is a form of ‘accommodation’ for children who are looked after, and at its best is an intervention in a child's life that can potentially make a significant difference for the better.
How this Book is Structured
The book is made up of seven substantive chapters, all of which relate to different aspects of social work and foster care. Six of the chapters have illustrative case studies which are fictitious, but informed by my practice experience since 2005.
Two points need explaining to the reader. First, I refer to foster carer in the singular, in the main, for ease of reading, but am aware that most fostering households are comprised of couples who foster. Second, like many local authorities are increasingly doing, I refer to ‘child looked after’, with its related acronym, CLA, thus avoiding the much criticised shortening of the term ‘looked after child’ to LAC; an unfortunate acronym, being so close as it is to ‘lack’, a word we would not want associated with children in public care.
Chapter 2 gives the reader an overview of the legal and policy landscape that foster care and social work inhabit. The rate of change regarding legislative and policy developments in this area of practice is formidable; what is covered in the chapter relates to the time of writing. It was beyond the scope of this book to cover the legislative frameworks for foster care in all four nations of the UK; this chapter only addresses that of England. However, the substance of the rest of the book is relevant to social work and foster care practice in all four UK nations.
Chapter 3 considers seven inquiries and serious case reviews (SCR) involving the deaths of, or injury to, children while in foster care. From the findings of the related reports the chapter draws together matters relating to: the regulatory framework; the assessment process; inter-professional communication; resources; and skills acquisition or application.
Chapter 4 addresses the assessment of prospective foster carers and includes discussion about: recruitment of foster carers; types of foster care; assessment in general; assessment of foster carers in particular; what the Standards, Guidance and Regulations say; what needs to be considered in all foster carer assessments; tools for undertaking assessments; assessing sameness and difference; recruiting and assessing particular groups of foster carers; ethnicity, nationality and religion; and the assessment of lesbian and gay prospective foster carers.
Chapter 5 discusses the supervision and support of foster carers. Here the role of the SSW is explicitly examined. What the Standards, Guidance and Regulations say; the SSW/foster carer supervisory relationship; supervision; support and development; child-focused reparatory care; placement planning; team around the child; contact; foster children moving on; managing allegations; valuing and developing a child's heritage/positive sense of self; and permanence are all considered.