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Family Foster Care: Can it Survive the Evidence?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2014

Frank Ainsworth  and
Patricia Hansen
Frank Ainsworth*
Affiliation:
School of Social Work and Community Welfare, James Cook University, Townsville campus, Queensland 4811, Australia
Patricia Hansen
Affiliation:
Hansen Legal, Parramatta, NSW 2150 and Australian Catholic University, Sydney, NSW 2135, Australia
*
address for correspondence: Dr Frank Ainsworth, PhD, Senior Principal Research Fellow (Adjunct), School of Social Work and Community Welfare, James Cook University, Townsville campus, Queensland 4811. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The media coverage of foster care in Australia is replete with adoration for foster carers who look after disadvantaged and difficult children and youth. As this article is being written, New South Wales is holding a ‘foster care week’ with enhanced media coverage and praise for foster carers, the recruitment of new foster carers and acclaim for the ‘foster carer of the year’. Yet, there is another side to foster care that offers less than ideal circumstances for children in care. There is the worrying issue of multiple placements, the problem with children and young people running away from foster care before they reach the legal age for discharge, and evidence of increased incidence of poor educational attainment and involvement in juvenile offending for young people in foster care. In addition, there are cases of foster children being abused by foster carers. As adults, former foster-care children and youth are over-represented among the homeless, in adult correction centres, the unemployed and the users of mental health services. This article documents these negative outcomes of entering the foster-care system, and asks whether family (or non-relative) foster care can survive this evidence. For too many children and young people, family foster care may not provide better outcomes than less-than-optimal parental care from which the children were removed. An alternative is to reduce the use of family foster care and increase intensive support and parenting education services for birth parents who have limited parenting capacity. The aim should be to limit the number of children being taken into care.

Keywords

foster carejuvenile offendingeducational achievementmental healthearly parenting
Type
Special Section: Moving beyond protection: Inclusiveness and families
Information
Children Australia , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , June 2014 , pp. 87 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2014 

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