Make life "everyday" for foster children

I am fascinated by a study from the University of Leicester in the UK which looks at the value of simple everyday activities for children in care. It seems that engaging children in the kinds of typical day to day activities can positively impact the sense of well-being. This can be what seems mundane - take the children shopping; play games; help care for pets; get involved in fun activities like going swimming.

These various types of activities engage children with the family system and also expose them to low stress and rewarding experiences. It socializes the child in a different way than may be quite different than experiences prior to coming into care. These sorts of activities, the researchers note, help the children to find their place within the social environment. By being successful and belonging, they can then develop a sense of empowerment in their own world - they be become actors who can create positivity in their life and are not driven by protective reactivity.

This can also lead children into finding comfort and reward in activities that link them to prosocial environments and connections.

In the world of increasing budget constraints, ins't it wonderful to think of the power of these everyday types of activities when a child is included in them with the foster family and other peers. This can also mentor children into learning how to manage free time more constructively.

The report notes:

• The participation of young people growing up in care is constructed in binary ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ terms. This research has found that this perception can lead to facilitated activities being overvalued and everyday participation being undervalued. The self-expression found in some forms of everyday participation feeds into young people’s sense of autonomy, yet this is not always recognised. 

• Participation facilitated by the corporate parent and foster carers of young people in care has a positive influence on the choices young people make regarding their own everyday participation. But this works both ways and what they choose to do in their free time in turn influences their decision to engage with the types of participation on offer. 

•  Safeguarding the well-being of young people in care is a priority for social services and carers. Ensuring and upholding this priority affects and takes precedence in different aspects of the young persons everyday life, including their participation. The requirement to safeguard can interrupt or even prevent participation inside and outside of the home. This leads to young people in care being treated differently and at times can lead to their exclusion.  

• Participation for young people exists in different geographical locations. However, when a young person in care moves placement, participation can be disrupted or even discontinued. 

The latter point speaks to the need for stability so that children can make connections that they can then hold onto allowing them to expand their sense of place, belonging and worth.

If you would like to look at the report go here and follow the links.

Opposing forces in child protection

There are some challenging opposing forces that case managers in child protection must constantly juggle.

Aging out

The question of children who grow up in the foster or group care system has been a haunting one. The answers are too often discouraging. Long term research continues to tell us that these youth are more likely to end up homeless, poor, mentally ill, involved in the criminal justice system and be parents of children far too early. There are of course, exceptions. Many of us who have worked in or around the child protection system know the exceptions.

I have had former foster and group care youth in my classes at university. I have met some who have managed to create careers in the trades. This is partially because of good planning and caring adults who saw these youths into adulthood.

Increasingly we are seeing that young people from all sorts of family situations are taking longer to transition into adulthood. They stay at home longer, they take longer to establish themselves in careers and they will have a harder time affording their own house. Even those who come from relatively advantaged environments face these challenges. Those who have grown up in care face much greater obstacles as their support systems are often weaker.

Making the point is a video which is making the rounds.  Aging out

You Tube has many other such videos.

In an environment where the income gaps between the rich and the rest (the famous 1%), the pressures on the most vulnerable will grow. Those in foster and group care are amongst the most vulnerable. We must challenge the policy makers to recognize this and create programs that do bridge the transition as strongly as possible. Many jurisdictions are trying to tackle the problem with a variety of creative programs. More options are needed. Perhaps one discussion worth having is, that if society as a whole sees more kids staying at home longer into adulthood, why would we not expect that this vulnerable population will not also require such supports which significant extension of foster care would create? It's a tough question in environments where governments are into austerity. But what does it cost us to have these youth unsuccessful and placing demands on our health care and justice systems?

Fortunately, we are seeing fewer children in group or institutional care in Canada as seen in the following charts from the Canadian Incidence Study:

These help us to realize that policy changes can shift what happens, although the data also tells us that the rate of involvement with child protection in Canada is growing. The growth of kinship care may mean that there are more family members who will be there for the child over the long term. 

American data is also quite informative about what happens to kids as they come into care:

Some UK data adds to the debate:

The point, of course, is that we need to have the debate. What we have now is not working that well whether we are talking Canada, the USA or the UK.

Aging out of foster care

One of the most perplexing challenges for child protection systems, is what happens to children who age out of the system. This is the point when the child becomes legally an adult and then moves beyond the mandate of the child protection authority. There are many jurisdictions that make some level of support available for some children as they make their way through this transition. Not all children will receive this support.

As I have noted in other posts, the outlook for these individuals is often poor. Research has noted that they tend to not finish high school, have poor employment prospects and records, have higher rates of mental health and substance abuse concerns, greater involvement in the criminal justice systems, early parenthood and more relational problems. Not a rosy picture!

Some soon to be published research by Cunningham and Diversi takes a qualitative look at the aging out experience. It is a valuable addition to the literature. It includes the voices of young people in the transition. Their conclusions also help to inform the debate around what should happen - because clearly we are, as yet, not successful frequently enough with youth who are aging out.

Yes, there are exceptions. Recently, at the very excellent Canadian Society for the Investigation of Child Abuse Conference, I listened to twins, now adults and in university, speak about their journey with the incredible support of a dedicated foster parent. Even so, they spoke of a sibling whose life trajectory has not been so successful. I fear that their story of success is more the exception than the norm.

As an aside, if you have the chance to attend their future conferences, it is an excellent conference - has been for several years.

Returning to the Cunningham and Diversi research, they note in their conclusions:

The youth we spoke with described a transition to adulthood that was immediate and complete, lacking the series of small steps toward autonomy that is common among emerging adults in contemporary societies (Arnett, 2004). Furthermore, the independence experienced by foster youth clashes with research highlighting the brain development which continues into adulthood, and the impact of trauma on emotional regulation and decision-making (Avery and Freundlich, 2009). Youth struggled to meet their basic needs, describing unemployment, hunger, and home- lessness. For the youth interviewed, securing employment held a special signifi- cance as the difference between housing and homelessness. Youths’ experiences of aging out often centered on their preparedness for, or lack of preparation, to secure living wage jobs. The emphasis on employment among the youth we spoke with runs counter to the trend of delayed workforce entry among young adults (Furstenberg et al., 2005).

In other words, our system to move youth to adulthood does not recognize that they may not have achieved the maturational level to handle this without support - something that we see in many families throughout western culture. The age of leaving home appears to be going up as the challenges of moving to adulthood is increasingly complex. Yet, if you are aging out of the foster care system, you are most often expected to handle that transition sooner, with fewer supports and often with significant emotional challenges. Why we would expect these youth to do it differently than most youth is a mystery.

This might be explained by the artificial legal definition of when you become an adult. This can vary from 18 - 21 years of age. But this definition has little to do with real world challenges - it is only a legal definition.

One of the things that we might consider in helping these youth is supporting familial relationships over time. I was struck by this conclusion:

Youth spoke of relationships with siblings, foster family members, and the affirmation that came in some cases from reunification from birth parents. However, most youth experienced high levels of social network disruption, citing frequent moves and the loss of family and home. The loss that youths spoke about most frequently was separation from siblings. Older siblings expressed fear and a sense of responsibility for their younger siblings, even in the face of having to meet basic needs on their own. The lack of contact with siblings is particularly painful considering that most foster youth report closer relationships with their siblings than with parents (Courtney et al., 2007; Reilly, 2003) and sibling relationships are typically the most enduring across the lifespan

How important sustaining these relationships are! This may well make the transitions healthier.

I was also struck by the resistance to help that had been seen in the research sample. It made me wonder how we their personal stories made seeking and accepting support such a challenge:

The self-reliance youth expressed was extreme, with their anxiety about dependence on others evident in statements such as the fear of being ‘shot down’ when asking others for help, or the need to avoid permanent connections to others through adoption or legal guardianship, in order to protect themselves from further loss. The possible reality of being homeless and living on the streets illustrates the extreme anxiety that youth may feel over the transition to independence, and the need for developing autonomy beyond that expected of most youth and young adults in our society. The level of self-reliance expressed by youth interviewed mirrors the ‘survivalist self-reliance’ described by Samuels and Pryce (2008) which illustrates the resilience of youth but also presents a risk, as youth resist relationships with others who might provide support. In particular, the authors noted that youth were especially resistant to seeking emotional support from others.

This work is worth a read as it certainly adds to our understanding of both how challenging this transition is but also how poorly we prepare and support that transition with a population who find the support difficult to get and accept.

Reference:

Cunningham, M.J. & Diversi, M. (2012). Aging out: Youths' perspectives on foster care and the transition to independence. Qualitative Social Work, on line first. downloaded 2012/05/15 from http://qsw.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/05/03/1473325012445833.   doi: 10.1177/1473325012445833

Foster Caregivers

Foster parents have often been accused of simply seeing the care of children as a money making scheme - their business so to speak. This has rarely been my experience in decades of working in the field. While there have been a few occasions where I wondered about the motivation of the foster parent, they have been rare indeed.


New research published this week in the British Journal of Social Work offers insight into the views of foster parents and their perceptions. The work was done in Australia but resonates for me.


The goal of a foster parent is to find ways to offer a family environment for children who are, in most cases, temporarily in their care. For many children, the stability of the foster home can represent an almost foreign experience. This can lead some children to quickly adapt and even start to call the foster parents mom and dad. For other children, it is a difficult to adapt fearing to do so would be disloyal to their biological family. Some children arrive with few behavioural or medical problems - many arrive with complex issues.


It is with this in mind that I found the research of Blythe et al of note. The authors, who did a qualitative study, show the real dilemma that can exist between children in short versus long term care.

Participants identified the responsibility of a short-term foster-carer to include preparing the children for either reunification with their birth fam- ilies or transition to a long-term placement. Given the notion of future re- unification or transition, participants described that to assume a mothering role was inappropriate. Conversely, participants specified their responsibil- ity as a long-term foster-carer to involve embracing the children into their own families. Felicia explained: ‘In short-term you’re preparing the child for their long term placement. Where long-term—you’re it. So you’re mum. . . . Your family becomes their family.’

With this, you can see the competing roles that many foster parents must manage. However, this research also helps us to see the level of commitment that foster carers bring to the task:

Foremost in participants’ stories was their commitment to the children. Most participants described a willingness to accept the good with the bad, celebrating and lamenting with and for the children. Although some parti- cipants revealed caring for the children was often arduous due to the chil- dren’s complex behavioural, developmental and psychological needs, their commitment to the children was unwavering. When reflecting on her own commitment, Gloria commented:

...it’s been bloody hard work but I guess we went into these two boys [thinking] okay, we’re going to see them through and no matter what is required, we’re going to do the best we can to make sure that happens.

The degree of emotional commitment also needs to vary depending upon the length of anticipated stay. The longer the stay, the greater the commitment to being "mother". Some of the research participants also spoke about trying to make up for deficits that the children had experienced.


The complex needs of the children and the competing need to provide a secure, safe and nurturing environment was something that showed in this research. Also evident is the ambiguous role of the foster parent who is the carer but not the legal parent.

It is clear that the participants perceived themselves as mothers to the long-term foster children in their care. However, questions remain regard- ing how these women maintain their maternal self-perception within a gov- erning system that retains legal authority over the children, thus limiting their maternal autonomy.

This research showed the deep commitment to the role and belies the critics who seek to demean the contribution that foster parents make to the care of children who come into the system. This research shows what I have come to understand is the norm. Yes, there are sad cases where foster carers have not been safe - those cases are important ones for us to also research and understand but they should not be the story of what is typical.


Reference:


Blythe, S.L., Halcomb, E.L., Wilkes, L. & Jackson, D. (2012). Perceptions of Long-Term Female Foster-Carers: I’m Not a Carer, I’m a Mother. British Journal of Social Work, online first. doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcs047