Final Report for Fostering Healthy Futures

The Fostering Healthy Futures (FHF) model has been consulted on widely in terms of the feasibility of running the model for the benefit of young people in Wales. The model is premised on 8 young people (4 boys and 4 girls) who have recently entered foster care (age 9-11) participating in a manualised group work programme over a 30 week period, combined with being mentored by Masters’ social worker students; two groups run at the same time. The aim is to improve the long term mental health and well-being of care experienced young people. The staff from FHF, US have been keen to work with us and have been supportive thoughout in terms of discussing and advising on the operation of the model

Final Report for Fostering Healthy Futures

The Fostering Healthy Futures (FHF) model has been consulted on widely in terms of the feasibility of running the model for the benefit of young people in Wales. The model is premised on 8 young people (4 boys and 4 girls) who have recently entered foster care (age 9-11) participating in a manualised group work programme over a 30 week period, combined with being mentored by Masters’ social worker students; two groups run at the same time. The aim is to improve the long term mental health and well-being of care experienced young people. The staff from FHF, US have been keen to work with us and have been supportive thoughout in terms of discussing and advising on the operation of the model

Inner world of foster care : an in-depth exploration.

This thesis presents a qualitative case study of successful fostering in Wales. The study examines the social worlds of ten foster families from across Wales and undertakes an in-depth analysis of what helps to promote success in fostering. The families occupy three differing contexts comprising local authority fostering, independent agency fostering and local authority fostering but receiving specialist support from a voluntary agency. The study has aimed to involve all the participants within the foster family: the carers, the foster children, the birth children and, where appropriate, adult birth children who no longer live at home but continue to provide support and care to the foster family. The thesis addresses key issues such as the motivation to foster, and the every day world of caring, food, the body, space and time, and children. The data are discussed in relation to a number of theoretical and conceptual frameworks, including critical engagements with relationality, intimacy and the sociology of the family. I have attempted to reflect faithfully the agency and the voice of children who participated in this research. In so doing, I have particularly focused on the nature of care in the context of the embodied encounter with the physical and emotional world and to reveal this world from their perspective, and from the adults and significant others who provide foster care. Throughout this thesis I refer to children and young people interchangeably. I do this to avoid repetition. However, where age-relevant distinctions need to be made, I make clear my categorisation of child or young person

Views from birth children: exploring the backstage world of sibling strangers

This article reports on an in-depth qualitative case study of 10 foster care families across England and Wales, and focuses on the birth children and their experiences of supporting the young people placed with them. We explore with these children and young people some of the challenges they perceive, the benefits they reap, as well as the skills and strengths that they bring to fostering. Their accounts of caring indicate that birth children engage in careful strategies of ‘sibling-like’ mediation with the fostered ‘strangers’ who first enter their homes and which, over time, brings an indispensable ‘glue’ to relationships that may all too often go unrecognised. The importance of learning from their contribution to placement stability and supporting them in their role concludes our exposition of this critical but sometimes neglected realm of fostering relationships and family life