Entering foster care: Foster children's accounts* 1 (original) (raw)
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FOSTERED VOICES: NARRATIVES OF U.S. FOSTER CARE
Dissertation, 2019
Critiques of the U.S. foster care system as “broken” span multiple disciplines, including journalism, social work, sociology, psychology, and legal studies. Foster care “brokenness” is poorly defined in these critiques but generally refers to how policies and practices fail to adequately help and support people involved with the foster care system. These disciplines approach understanding “brokenness” via a single problem (e.g., specific policies, inadequate prevention programs, family and community deficits) or measures of “outcomes” (e.g., the foster-care-to-prison-pipeline, low educational attainment for fostered youth, drug abuse). This study applied anthropological methods and theories to the problem of the system’s “brokenness.” In particular, I used participant observation, semi-structured interviews, qualitative surveys, and media and historical analyses to examine foster care as a social, political, economic, and hierarchical institution comprised of the subjects of foster care, namely fostered youth, their kin, foster parents, and foster care professionals. I conducted data collection for 46 months and relied on two fieldsites: a geographic expanse of urban and rural South Texas consisting of courts, community meetings, non- profit foster care organizations, foster care training sites, and private homes, and a digital, qualitative survey with respondents across the U.S. The local South Texas fieldsite and digital field together allowed me to collect 101 narratives of foster care. A holistic anthropological approach revealed that the premise that foster care is “broken” is flawed. The assertion of “brokenness” presumes the primary goal of foster care is to help and support families and children. Exploring what the foster care system iii actually does for and to the families, youth, foster parents, and professionals involved with the institution made clear that the system’s most basic function is to shape, control and reform its subjects into compliant neoliberal citizens. Media analysis demonstrates how persistent meta-narratives of foster care obscure the production of structural inequalities. A historical review illuminates how foster care has always been primarily a system for managing impoverished people, rather than a system for aiding families or protecting children. Ethnographic data elucidates how well-meaning and kind judges, social workers, and foster parents become unwitting participants in structural violence that subjugates kin and fostered youth and limits their resistance.
Introduction: There Is No Typical Story of Foster Care
2018
In this introductory chapter, Musgrove and Michell provide a critical reflection on the intersections between histories of foster care and contemporary social debates. Why, the chapter asks, has foster care failed children in such similar ways for so many years—not only in Australia but in many parts of the Western World? The chapter locates the study of foster care firmly in the age of apologies and inquiries into past child welfare practices and rising public concern about historical child abuse. It provides an overview of the history of foster care in Australia from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, and describes the archival and oral history research methodologies underwriting this history of foster care in Australia.
Journal of Child and Family Studies, 2010
"We sought to provide a new framework for understanding the training and ongoing support of foster parents. The experiences of authorized foster parents were viewed in the context of an experiment, whereby foster parents entered an out-of-home care placement with preconceived ideas and expectations of what the provision of care would be like. We have investigated the experience of foster care from the perspective of the foster parent who tests expectations of providing care as one might conduct any experiment. Focus group discussion yielded five global domains of foster care experience: birth family, motivation, agency influences, relationship impacts, and attachment. Foster carers commonly described these domains as central to the overall experience of providing foster care. Furthermore, specific experiences within each domain were seen to either encourage or discourage the further provision of foster care. Individual interviews regarding the practical experiences related to these domains uncovered struggles of foster parents who sought to understand their role identity as a ‘‘foster parent’’, and their self identity as a ‘‘mother’’. We discuss implications arising from the experience of these domains of care and their related struggles."
Voicing the system: How formerly fostered adults make meaning of the U.S. foster care system
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 2020
The U.S. foster care system aims to provide care to children who are unable to live safely with their families of origin. Yet, fostered youth endure negative experiences before, during, and after foster care. This study investigates tensions between stated goals and experiences of foster care, from the perspective of (formerly) fostered youth. Framed by relational dialectics theory, contrapuntal analysis of 32 narrative interviews revealed two discourses that construct meaning of the foster care system: (1) Discourse of System as (a Necessary) Good aligned with stated goals, constructing the system as helpful and Discourse of System as Harmful (but Necessary) competed with assumptions that foster care is helpful, constructing the system as broken. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
The view from down here: Foster children's stories
Child and Youth Care Forum, 2000
Foster children have stories and the whole foster care system, including the child, need to hear them. The story metaphor is useful in understanding how foster children perceive and process their world. Stories can help foster children better understand themselves, and help case managers, therapists, foster parents, teachers and policy makers hear these children in order to better attend to their needs. These children desire to have a greater part in the decisions that affect their lives, and hearing from them is important in honoring the unique and powerful story each child experiences. A framework for understanding and using stories is offered and relevant studies are reviewed and research suggestions are made.
Framed by Relational Dialectics Theory, this study explores the ways adult, former foster children discursively construct meanings of "family." Contrapuntal analysis of 24 interviews revealed two discourses as competing to constitute family: the Discourse of Family as Irreplaceable and Inescapable (Permanence) and the Discourse of Family as Performative Kinning (Performance). Permanence was constituted by themes of biology and historical connection, reifying normative understandings. Performance, comprised of role enactment, need for tolerance, and unconditional love, challenged the Permanence discourse. Throughout the narratives, Performance competed with Permanence for dominance, illustrating the cultural pervasiveness and power of Permanence yet, in some moments, privileging the marginalized Performance discourse. This discursive competition constructed meanings of family in narratives of life before, during, and after foster care. Overall, participant's talk constructed complex webs of family relationships, allowing access to an important social institutionfamily-regardless of the presence/absence of culturally valued markers of family (e.g., biology, legality).
Foster Care in the Context of Trends and Changes in the Concept of Parenthood
Social Pathology & Prevention, 2023
The author perceives the contexts of contemporary changes through the lens of the problems of children growing up outside their biological family, e.g. in foster care and adoption, but also in various social and educational institutions. It asks whether the best interests of the child are not in fact more likely to be the interests of a specific section of parents with their own interests at heart, or those of adults who are part of ideological lobby groups. It highlights the fact that the upbringing and care of children growing up outside the biological family has a number of legal, ethical, psychological and educational aspects that are complicated to reconcile optimally for the benefit of the child at the present time.
Beyond the Silence: Emotional Experiences of Adolescents in Foster Care
SOUTHERN AFRICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT, 2017
Heavy workloads and the crisis in South African foster care compel many social workers to focus on the physical needs of foster children and neglect their psychosocial needs. This qualitative study employed individual interviews to explore the emotional experiences of 15 adolescents placed in foster care. While they were aware of the reasons for being fostered, their situation evoked feelings of sadness, stigmatisation and exclusion. Feelings towards their biological parents included emotional blunting, resentment towards fathers who did not care, and love for parents despite their absence. Emotions regarding their foster homes ranged from happiness and appreciation for being fostered, to feeling unhappy, neglected and scapegoated. Few of the adolescents knew their social workers and had minimal contact with them. Findings highlight the need for kinship grants (in addition to the provisions of section 186 of the Children's Second Amendment Act of 2015) to relieve social workers from the burden of excessive reviews of foster care grants and to allow them to focus more on the emotional needs of foster children.
Inner world of foster care : an in-depth exploration
2009
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