What is a family? Constructions of family and parenting after a custody transfer from birth parents to foster parents

Abstract

The subject of stability for children in long-term foster care is an emerging field within social work with vulnerable children. In Sweden, the adoption of foster children is not a common occurrence. Instead, when a child has been placed in foster care for 3 years, the local social welfare committee will consider whether the custody of the child should be transferred to the foster parents regardless of the circumstances of the birth parents, in order to secure stability and a sense of family belonging. Consequently, custody transfers raise questions such as "who is family?" and "who is a parent?" This qualitative interview study with custodians and young people who have experienced custody transfer highlights that who counts as family and as a parent is ambiguous. This article draws attention to how negotiations about family and parenthood revolve around biological, emotional, and relational dimensions. Furthermore, we show that stability for children in care has to be understood in terms of processes over time and not as the result of a single decision of custody transfer. Consequently, social workers need to take several aspects into account when they assess family belonging and stability for children in foster care. KEYWORDScontact with birth relatives, empirical research, foster care, parenting/parenthood, social work

Foster children’s perspectives on participation in child welfare processes: A meta-synthesis of qualitative studies

“…Children’s age ranges varied. Most studies sampled school-aged children (ages 6 to 12) and adolescents (ages 13 to 17) [ 23 , 41 , 42 , 44 , 45 , 47 , 49 , 50 , 54 – 56 , 60 , 61 ] and some sampled primarily school-aged children [ 40 , 48 , 57 , 58 ] or adolescents [ 43 , 46 , 62 , 63 ]. Only two studies investigated children under seven [ 52 , 56 ].…”

“…Common theoretical frameworks used by study authors across time to frame their study or findings were theories of attachment [ 40 , 41 , 43 , 48 , 49 , 63 ], child development [ 41 , 45 , 46 , 49 , 50 , 58 , 63 ], child well-being [ 40 , 41 , 45 , 46 , 49 , 50 , 52 , 56 ] and identity development [ 23 , 40 , 47 , 52 , 54 , 56 , 61 , 63 , 64 ]. Another influential discourse was the “best interests of the child” which was referenced by eight studies [ 23 , 46 – 48 , 50 , 56 , 60 , 62 ], two from a critical perspective [ 23 , 60 ]. The two studies [ 23 , 60 ] that were critical of the bests interests of the child discourse considered the impact of power imbalances between adults and children.…”

The concept of family: Perspectives of Spanish young people in foster care

“…Analysing how people 'do family' is at the heart of valorising the lived experiences of family (Finch, 2007;McCarthy & Edwards, 2010). Some research has used these sociological concepts as base for interpreting the multiple belongings experienced by children and young people who are in foster care (e.g., Biehal, 2014;Sità & Mortari, 2022;Wissö et al, 2019). Some scholars emphasise the continued significance of the collective views of what families should look like (McIntosh et al, 2011) and the idea of family as a pervasive cultural symbol (Jackson in McIntosh et al, 2011), particularly in 'familial' cultures.…”

Professional or authentic motherhood? Negotiations on the identity of the birth mother in the context of foster care

“…This implies that foster parents, birth parents and the child welfare unit actively cooperate on issues concerning the child, in Sweden often referred to as three-part parenting (Skoog et al., 2015). When a child cannot return to his/her birth parents, the most common practice in Sweden is long-term foster care rather than adoption (Skoog et al., 2015; Wissö et al., 2019). Therefore, the primary role of foster parents, even within a long-term perspective, is not to replace but rather to complement the birth parents, creating a co-parenting partnership around the child.…”