Reviewing the literature on the breakdown of foster care placements for young people: complexity and the social work task
Research in Practice
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Factors associated with the breakdown of long-term foster care placements during adolescence, exploring the needs of these looked-after young people and their foster carers.
- Christine Harkin and Stan Houston
- Child Care in Practice Vol 22, (2016)
Young people who have been in long-term foster placements since early childhood often experience difficulties emerging in adolescence, with foster carers stating that they can no longer sustain the placement.
Factors related to the young person
The following factors were among those most frequently cited as contributing to the rates of breakdown - in foster placements, residential placements and small socio-pedagogical homes:
- Externalising or anti-social behaviours
- Entering a placement at an older age, or directly from living at home
- Emotional difficulties
- Experiencing mental health issues
- Difficult behaviours inside and outside the home (peer associations)
- Attachment difficulties
- Wanting to leave the placement
- History of emotional abuse.
Factors which improved placement stability included:
- The remit of the care placement being to work with young people with behavioural difficulties
- Appropriate therapeutic support being available and accessed
- Identifying foster carers as "the immediate primary therapeutic agents", highlighting how this relationship is central to meeting the young person's emotional needs
- Co-ordination and meaningful communication between professionals, agencies and foster carers to create what Simmonds (2010) calls "a therapeutic community" around a young person.
Factors related to the foster carers
Characteristics which inform a foster carer's ability to perform this parenting role include:
- A concern for young people's welfare
- Tolerance
- Open mindedness
- Empathy
- Realistic expectations (Buehler et al; 2003).
Despite many families being highly motivated, they felt overwhelmed by hastily made placements, with limited information received about the young people entering their homes.
Foster carers struggled to respond appropriately to behavioural issues, particularly adolescent risk-taking behaviours. Where the young person was considered, and felt part of the family, foster carers were more committed to the young person. This sense of "belonging" may have influenced the way carers viewed and understood the young person's behaviours (Leathers, 2006).
Role of the birth family
This was a factor which increased foster carers' stress levels due to the escalation of difficult behaviours following contact, which for some young people continued to be a rejecting, unreliable and neglectful experience. Yet Oosterman et al (2007) did not find contact to be a statistically significant factor leading to placement breakdown. Indeed, they highlighted how co-operation between birth parents, grandparents and foster carers could lead to beneficial outcomes. Hence, good quality contact could lessen the risk of breakdown.
The role of social workers
Farmer et al (2005) argued that social work support was pivotal in alleviating a foster carer's stress and consistency of relationships was highly important. Khoo and Skoog (2013) found that foster carers believed placement breakdown could have been avoided in some instances with improved pre-placement information and preparation, enhanced support during the placement, and greater discussion of alternatives at the end of placement. The need for both consistent contact and immediate intervention at times of crisis was underlined.
Factors contributing to placement breakdowns included:
- Changes of social worker
- The limited accessibility of social work support
- Frustration of not having telephone calls returned
- The social worker having a different perspective on needs which foster carers sometimes viewed as criticism of their performance
- Deficits in social work support to wider systems' failures, pointing to high statutory caseloads and lack of resources.
Implications for practice
The findings suggested that "breakdown was a complex process rather than a single event" shaped by the interaction of individuals and their context (Khoo and Skoog, 2013).
It involves the interplay between a range of dynamic risk and protective factors, operating in the broader context of the young person's history and life experiences and their caregiving environment.
The research section for this special report is based on a selection of academic studies which have been explored and summarised by Research in Practice, part of the Dartington Hall Trust.
This article is part of CYP Now's special report on foster care. Click here for more