Kinship Care

Fostering Effective Family and Friends Placements

Elaine Farmer, Sue Moyers

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781843106319
• eBook ISBN: 9781846428036
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Children are frequently cared for by relatives and friends when parents, for whatever reason, are unable to care for their children themselves. Yet there has been very little information about how well children do when placed with kin or how safe they are in these placements.

This book compares formal kinship care to traditional foster placements in order to ascertain which children are placed with kin, in what circumstances, how well such children progress, and how often these placements disrupt. The authors explore whether children placed with family and friends fare better or worse than other foster children, what services are provided and needed, and how kin care is experienced by carers, children and social workers.

This book will be essential reading for social workers, policy makers, students and all those working with looked-after children, and will enable local authorities to make informed decisions about where best to place children and the support needed by family and friend carers.

Part I

The Study

Chapter 1

Background

Introduction

I’m glad that I’m with my nan and granddad because I know that I’m not going to be going anywhere because they’re settled down and they’re happily married.

There is a long history in the UK, as in most countries, of children being cared for by relatives and other kin when their parents, for whatever reason, are unable to care for the children themselves. Most of these care-taking arrangements are made without the involvement of the child welfare system.

Where children’s services are involved, government statistics show that there has been a steady rise in the numbers of children in care in England who are fostered with family and friends. The proportion increased from 6 per cent of looked after children in 1989 to 10 per cent in 1998 and 12 per cent in 2005 (Department of Health 1991 and 1999; Department for Education and Skills 2006). At the same time, a more hidden group of children cared for by kin, (which does not appear in these figures), are those supported outside the care system, through the use of residence or special guardianship orders or payments for children in need.

The increasing use of kin care, which in some local authorities may represent as much as 40 per cent or more of all foster placements, has not been matched by an increase in knowledge for practitioners and policy-makers about how well these placements work, what helps them to succeed or when they should not be used. It is these issues which this book addresses.

About this book

This book shows which children in which circumstances go to family and friends rather than unrelated foster carers, the progress they make and the outcomes for children in each kind of placement. Placement progress and the supports and services provided to children in these two settings are compared so that the implications for practice and policy can be drawn out.

In the rest of this opening chapter we sketch in the background to the study on which this book is based, and provide a brief review of the relevant literature. In Chapter 2 we turn to the design of the study and the research methods employed. Chapters 3 to 5 compare kinship care with unrelated foster care and consider how the placements were made, the backgrounds of the children and carers, the services provided, contact with parents, how children progressed and the outcomes of placements at the two-year follow-up. Chapters 6 to 9 look in depth at kin carers’ experiences of looking after these children, including such issues as assessment, relationships with other family members and social workers, financial and other forms of support, the children’s safety and the impact of caring for the children on the carers themselves. These chapters draw on detailed information from the case files and more particularly on interviews with kin carers, the children who live with them, their birth parents and social workers. The final chapter draws the findings together and considers their implication for policy and practice.

Definitions

The book focuses on those placements with family and friends that come to the attention of children’s services and receive some help, irrespective of the legal status of the children. Thus, children supported under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 or on residence orders are included, as well as kin who had been approved as foster carers (more information on the legal status and arrangements that cover the placements are given in Chapter 4). In this book family and friends are often referred to as ‘kin’ for the sake of simplicity – ‘kin placements’, ‘kin care’ or ‘kinship care’ therefore refer to placements with either family or friends. ‘Unrelated’, ‘non-related’, ‘non-relative’ or ‘stranger’ foster carers are the terms used for foster carers who are not related to the child or are not friends of the family. Placements with family include any placements with a family member other than the birth parents, such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins or older siblings. Placements with friends include the friends of the child or of the parents, guardians, god-parents, step-parents, teachers or any other unrelated adult who has offered the child a home.

Earlier research on family and friends placements in the UK

Despite the exhortation in the Children Act 1989 to pursue placements with family and friends before considering stranger foster care for children, there has been little research into these placements in England, with the notable exception of the pioneering work of Broad and others (e.g. Broad 2001; Broad, Hayes and Rushforth 2001; Doolan, Nixon and Lawrence 2004; Flynn 2000; Greef 1999; Pitcher 2002). Nonetheless, most of these studies have been small projects and had limitations, particularly in terms of evaluating outcomes. Yet kin placements have the potential to help local authorities to meet the Every Child Matters outcomes and the earlier Quality Protects objectives (Department of Health 1998), for example by increasing placement choice, promoting attachment to carers, promoting placement stability and ensuring young people leaving care are not isolated as they enter adulthood. It is particularly surprising that so little research on family and friends placements has been conducted in this country, since as long ago as 1984 Rowe suggested that placement with relatives or friends might be beneficial for children (Rowe et al. 1984).

Subsequent research by Rowe and her colleagues (1989) showed that children placed with relatives were much more likely to be in long-term care than those in non-related foster care and these placements more often than others met their aims fully or in most respects. More recently, Sinclair, Gibbs and Wilson (2004; 2005a;) found, as part of a larger study of foster care, that the outcomes of kinship foster placements were similar to those with unrelated foster carers. Hunt (2001) found that the possibility of kinship placements was not ‘routinely investigated’ and cases could reach court before it had been explored. Other research has shown (Brandon et al. 1999; Packman and Hall 1998) that care with relatives is used in a minority of child protection cases at the outset of agency involvement.

The potential benefits of family and friends care

The potential benefits of placement within the extended family include placement in a familiar ethnic community, a greater sense of belonging (Mosek and Adler 2001) and security about identity, greater continuity and stability and that children anticipate staying with their carers into adulthood (Iglehart 1995). Young people in kinship care too are very positive about it (Broad et al. 2001) and, importantly, kin care may well be the first choice of both parent and child (Dubowitz 1994; Farmer and Owen 1995; Hegar and Scannapieco 1995; NFCA 1999; Rowe et al. 1984; Thornton 1987). Indeed, when 5000 young people were consulted about the Green Paper ‘Care Matters: Transforming the Lives of Children and Young People in Care’, three quarters said that ‘it was really important to see if there are other relatives who could look after a child before they go into care’ (DfES 2007, p.5).

Much research has demonstrated high levels of commitment by carers, the satisfaction they derive from caring and the strong bonds formed with children (see e.g. Altshuler 1999; Flynn 2001; Pitcher 1999; Tan 2000). In contrast, a Dutch and a New Zealand study found no difference in the quality of relationships or commitment between the two kinds of placement (Smith et al. 1999; Strijker, Zandberg and ven der Meulen 2003).

Government statistics on fostering in England suggest that a higher proportion of kin than stranger foster placements last for over two years (Department of Health 2001), whilst research suggests that children placed with kin have fewer moves both overall (Chipungu and Everett 1998) and before entering placement (Kosonen 1993; Rowe et al. 1984).

Continued contact with parents has been shown to be three times more likely than when children are placed with non-relative carers (Rowe et al. 1984) and links with the rest of the extended family may also be facilitated (see e.g. Brown, Cohon and Wheeler 2002). At the same time, research from the US suggests that, paradoxically, reunification with birth parents happens less frequently from placements with relatives or friends (Berrick et al. 1994; Dubowitz, Feigelman and Zuravin 1993; Scannapieco and Jackson 1996; Thornton 1991; Wulczyn and Goerge 1992; see also Rowe et al. 1989).

Potential problems and issues

Whilst there is likely to be more contact with parents and other relatives, contact difficulties have been shown to occur more often in kin than in stranger placements (see e.g. Cleaver 2000; Laws 2001; Malos and Bullard 1991; Rowe et al. 1984). We do not know how difficult it is for relative carers to protect children and to limit contact with parents if the safety of the child is compromised by contact, although in extreme cases this contact can lead to abuse or even death (Birmingham ACPC 2004; London Borough of Lambeth 1987). Similarly there is little research on the safety of kinship care, with American studies providing conflicting findings on whether there are more allegations of abuse in kinship than non-kin foster care (Benedict, Zuravin and Stallings 1996; Dubowitz et al. 1993). This book addresses these issues.

In addition, research has shown that placement with family and friends can lead to varying patterns of alliance between the agency, carers, child and parents, for example when an exclusive relationship between the carers and parents places the local authority on the sidelines or when a close alliance between the carers and authority actively excludes the parents (O’Brien 1999, 2000). However, we do not know how often these issues present serious obstacles in practice.

This links with some evidence of reluctance to use kinship care because it lessens social worker power and control; is seen as more difficult to work with partly because of the carers’ prior relationship with the parents; placements are more difficult to supervise and practitioners lack confidence in their skills and knowledge in this area (Beeman and Boisen 1999; McFadden 1998; Portengen and van der Neut 1999). Moreover, some practitioners are wary of placing children with relatives for fear that the latter will display the same dysfunctional behaviour as the birth parents from whom the child was removed.

We need to know more too about the ability of grandparents to cope with looking after their grandchildren as they grow older and the potential challenges of adolescence emerge. The little evidence that exists is contradictory (Pitcher 1999; Richards 2001; Stokes and Greenstone 1981). Indeed, Stogdon (1999) sees ageism as a major obstacle to the use of kinship care in the UK.

Approval and assessment

In the UK kinship care has been grafted on to the existing system of children’s services and one study found that of the ten local authorities considered, most did not include kin as part of their fostering services, with kin carers generally located under social work field services (Flynn 2000).

It is likely too that in the UK there may be a built-in disincentive to make such placements if the burden of approval of caregivers falls on overworked field or duty social workers with little experience of this kind of assessment (Waterhouse and Brocklesby 1999). On the other hand, where family placement workers are involved, it has been found that they often have reservations about the suitability of kin carers, partly related to standards of care but also reflecting their doubts about the cost-effectiveness of investing in this group of carers who will probably take no other children in the future (NFCA 2000).

There is a high level of uncertainty in some local authorities about how best to deal with these placements, with some evidence of a lack of written policy or practice documents (NFCA 2000; see also Mason et al. 2002). Moreover, there is considerable variation in how family and friends assessments are made and who undertakes them and many are, of necessity, made when the child is already in the placement (NFCA 20...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Of Related Interest
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Part I: The Study
• Part II: Comparing Kinship and Non-kinship Foster Care
• Part III: Overviews and Kin Carer Perspectives on Kin Placements
• Appendix
• Notes
• References
• Subject Index
• Author Index