What is it about?
The article shows a brief history of the development of foster care and the research that has been undertaken with foster carers in Australia over the past decade
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Why is it important?
In recent years, there has been a vast increase in the number of children taken into state care. This is attributed largely to the increase in all forms of child abuse and neglect which, in turn, relates to parental drug abuse and resultant mental illness. Unfortunately foster carers have been leaving the service faster than they could be recruited. Studies have been undertaken to find out why this has happened. Unfortunately recommendations and findings appear to have been ignored, resulting in a crisis that has led to a current South Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into foster care and allegations of carer maltreatment by a succession of inadequately trained and inexperienced social workers. Carer dissatisfaction does not relate to inadequate financial compensation but to the lack of respect shown to them and the inadequacy of support.
Perspectives
Professor Freda Briggs is a former social worker and foster carer who, over a period of 21 years, voluntarily assisted in the training of foster carers relating to children's emotional needs and issues relating to child protection. The shortage of good foster homes led to traumatised children being placed in group homes and even caravan parks and cheap motels with minimally trained generalist carers from agencies. This was strongly criticised by Dr Fraser Mustard when he became South Australia's Thinker of the Year. The shortage of foster placements can lead to children being left in dangerous homes for far too long, making some unfosterable. It can also lead to children being returned to dangerous homes regardless of their wishes, creating what the NSPCC (1973) referred to as Yo-Yo children. e
Professor Freda Briggs
University of Suth Australia
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Foster Care from a Historical Perspective, Children Australia, October 2015, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/cha.2015.36.
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