A Comparative Survey of Specialist Fostering in the Uk and North America

Abstract

The development of specialist fostering in Britain was one of the childcare success stories of the 1980s. Malcolm Hill, Richard Nutter, Donal Giltinan, Joe Hudson and Burt Galaway report here the main findings of a comparative survey of specialist fostering undertaken in 1992, which provides an up-to-date picture of current trends.

Annotation: Outcomes in Long‐term Foster Family Care

“…Relatively new forms of foster care include '' specialist '' foster care, introduced into Britain by Hazel (1981). Its development has been studied by Hipgrave (1983, 1988), and outcomes assessed by Hill, Nutter, Hudson, and Galaway (1993), Rowe, Hundleby, and Garnett (1989), P. M. Smith (1986), and Yelloly (1979). Specialist foster care is probably not best defined in terms of length, but according to the difficulty of the task, and the fact that specialist foster carers are paid higher rates of allowance.…”

What the research tells us: Permanency planning, adoption and foster care

“…• About half of the professional or specialist treatment placements for difficult adolescents lasted as long as needed and achieved their aims (Hill et al, 1993;Rowe, Hundleby & Gamett, 1989).…”

Participatory research with children

“…Postal questionnaire surveys of social workers enable large samples to be covered (e.g. Rowe et al 1989;Hill et al 1993), but the number of questions and hence volume of information per child is restricted. Fratter et al (1991) note some of the problems of de®nition (e.g.…”