What happens in the foster family?

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without foster children, but a majority of those foster mothers who responded to the questionnaire did combine fostering and gainful employment. Fifty-seven per ...
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What Happens in the Foster Family? A Study of Fostering Relationships in Sweden Ingrid Höjer Adoption & Fostering 2004 28: 38 DOI: 10.1177/030857590402800106 The online version of this article can be found at: http://aaf.sagepub.com/content/28/1/38

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What happens in the foster family? A study of fostering relationships in Sweden The fostering assignment can have a great impact on the inner dynamics of the foster family. In a study by Ingrid Höjer at the University of Gothenburg, 366 foster carers (192 women and 174 men) responded to a questionnaire, and the wife and husband in 17 foster families were interviewed. Findings reveal how, through fostering, men and women became engaged in a kind of teamwork where both partners were working towards a mutual goal. This partnership seemed to increase the closeness between the couple. Women mainly initiated fostering, but men eventually became equally engaged. Both male and female carers were committed to the fostering task, which at times made it hard for them to combine foster care and parenting their own children. Biological children had less access to parental time and attention, as the problems of their foster siblings had to be the first priority for their parents.

Ingrid Höjer is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Work, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Key words: fostering, foster carers’ children, Sweden

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Intr oduction Sweden has a long tradition of placing children in foster care, as opposed to institutional care. Orphans and abandoned children have been placed in this way for several hundred years. Throughout the 20th Century, child welfare authorities as well as legislators continued to regard foster care as the preferred option for looking after children whose parents, for various reasons, were unable to care for them. There is no special Children’s Act in Sweden. The equivalent of a child welfare law is found in the Social Services Act, which serves as a regulatory framework for different areas of social care, and the Care of Young People Act, which regulates taking children and young people into care without the parents’ or the children’s consent. Municipalities in Sweden have a high degree of local autonomy and, as long as the basic standards of the Social Services Act are respected, local authorities can organise their child

welfare services in the way they find most suitable (Hessle and Vinnerljung, 2000). Sweden has a family services rather than a child protection orientation, and there is a high level of public support for state intervention (Andersson, 1999). About 18,500 children resided in placements outside their own home at some time during 2001 (8.5 per 1000 children aged 0–17 years). Two-thirds received care under a voluntary arrangement and one-third on a compulsory basis. Roughly three-quarters of these children were placed in foster homes (Socialtjänst, 2002, p 7). These figures show that many Swedish families are affected by foster care and child welfare policies. Research within the area of fostering and child welfare often focuses on foster children and their birth parents. However, the way fostering affects members of the foster family will have an impact on the quality of the foster care provided in the home, and of the situation of the foster child. Therefore it is of vital interest to increase knowledge of the impact of fostering on relations within the foster family. Fostering affects all members of families who foster. As most foster carers are couples with children, it affects their partnership and the lives of their children. The study To gain more knowledge of fostering from the perspective of foster carers, a study was carried out at Gothenburg University, Department of Social Work in 1997–2001. This was partly financed by the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research. The aim of the study was to find out how men and women experienced their tasks as foster carers, and what impact fostering had on the inner life of the foster family. Data were gathered on foster carers’ views of many aspects of fostering. This article will focus on the inner dynamics of the foster family: the impact of

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ADOPTION & FOSTERING VOLUME 28 NUMBER 1 2004

fostering on marital relations and the effect fostering has on the lives of the carers’ biological children. M ethod The population consisted of all foster carers with children who were placed in care by local child welfare authorities in Gothenburg (82 per cent of the sample) and in five other municipalities in western Sweden (18 per cent), with the following exceptions: 1 with newly placed teenagers •overfamilies the age of 15; kin placements in immigrant foster •families;

• professional foster carers; • single-parent foster carers. In Sweden it is hard to find foster families in urban areas, so many of the foster families lived in small municipalities and in rural parts of the country, sometimes at a considerable distance from Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city. Only active foster carers who lived together as a couple participated in the study. Foster carers who had given up fostering as a result of problems were not included; nor were couples who had separated.2 The exclusion of non-active and separated/divorced foster carers may have given the study a predominance of positive results. Data collect ion The data collection consisted of two parts: a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews with foster carers. According to Brannen (1992), the combination of methods may be a useful way to study different levels of enquiry and to explore various aspects of the same problem. To combine two different research methods may increase the validity (Denzin, 1970), but also presents difficulties in comparing results in a reliable way (Bryman, 1992).

When combining quantitative and qualitative methods, it is important that the researcher specifies the aims of each method and the nature of the data in the findings (Brannen, 1992). In this study the questionnaire furnished the research with more comprehensive information, where certain patterns could be identified. The in-depth interviews provided deeper knowledge of familial relations as well as an opportunity to concentrate on specific areas of interest. Questionnaire survey Questionnaires were posted to 550 foster carers. Half of the questionnaires were sent to foster mothers and half to foster fathers. This meant that either the man or the woman received a questionnaire. Three hundred and sixty-six foster carers (66 per cent) responded: 192 women and 174 men. Answers were analysed using the SPSS statistical package. Those foster carers who did not respond were asked why. This time, 59 foster carers (32 per cent of the nonrespondents) replied. Twenty-four said that they did not trust the anonymity of the study, while 25 found the questionnaire too long. Ten said they felt themselves to be too close to their foster children to answer questions about foster parenthood and six found the questions too complicated. Interviews with foster carers In the study, 34 foster carers were interviewed, ie the wife and husband in 17 foster families. Twelve of the couples had more than three years’ experience of fostering. These 12 couples were chosen from the caseload of each local foster care agency (five agencies in the city of Gothenburg and one in each of the five municipalities). Each agency picked out nine of their foster families who were willing to participate in the survey, three from each of the following categories:

For a more complete discussion about these exceptions, see Höjer, 2001. Eleven per cent of foster carers from all participating municipalities were divorced or separated. The same figure (11%) can be found in Triseliotis et al (2000) for divorced/separated foster carers in Scotland. 1 2

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ADOPTION & FOSTERING VOLUME 28 NUMBER 1 2004

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Table 1 Wor king hour s of foster car er s, expr essed in percentages*

Working hours

Foster mothers n = 189

Foster fathers n = 171

Working 100%

24

82

Working 75%

24

5

Working 50% or less

16

3

Working at home

20

3

Studying

Not working 3

Total

5

2

11

5

100

100

*Figures show percentages of columns, n = 360, p