60,722 research outputs found
Foster care in context: an evaluation of the foster care communication and recruitment strategy
No full textThis report makes important recommendations to ensure the ongoing efficiency and effectiveness of Victorian approaches to foster care publicity and recruitment. It also makes a significant contribution to the challenge of ensuring that foster care remains a sustainable option for the placement of children who cannot live at home.
Further it makes important recommendations to ensure that recruitment processes also meet the needs of potential foster carers. 
Living with foster siblings: the adjustment of adolescent sons and daughters in families who foster.
No full textThis paper aims to review how fostering affects the adjustment of adolescent sons and daughters in families who foster. The research is presented within a developmental psychopathology framework, addressing individual, parent-child and sibling factors that affect adolescents' adjustment. These factors are initially discussed in the context of 'normative' families and stepfamilies, as a prelude for understanding the adjustment of adolescents in reconstituted foster families. Secondly, fifteen studies were reviewed on birth children in families who foster. The literature specifically on adolescents in families who foster is scarce and most of the studies reviewed sampled birth children of all ages. Findings suggest that fostering affects the adjustment of birth children both positively and negatively. Birth children are more caring and mature as a result of fostering, but the relationship with their parents seems to change, resulting in less quality time. Finally, suggestions are made for future research, and clinical implications arising from the literature are discussed
Does emotional resilience enhance foster placement stability? A qualitative investigation.
No full textFrequent changes of foster placement are known to have a detrimental effect on the long-term well-being of cared for children. Foster carers who take on children with challenging behaviours have to draw on resources, both internal and external, to help them build and maintain a relationship with the child that will last. Not all foster carers are successful in this regard. The aim of this qualitative study was to explore the role that the emotional resilience of foster carers plays in promoting placement stability.
Seven foster carers, who had a track-record of stable placements (according to national criteria) with children exhibiting challenging behaviours, were recruited from a Local Authority in the North East of England. They attended a focus group and one-to-one interview. Verbatim transcripts were subjected to an inductive grounded theory analysis.
Three potential underlying constructs, namely emotional resilience, interpersonal characteristics and external factors, were found to emerge from the data and identified as likely to influence foster placement outcomes. These data provide a springboard for further quantitative investigation with the potential to screen prospective carers to identify those best suited to ‘difficult’ placements in order to maximise success for the benefit of all concerned
The Experience of Being a Foster Parent in Non-Kinship Placements: Emotional and Psychological Impacts
No full textDue to previous life experiences, children who enter the foster care system have been significantly impacted in numerous ways; and the individuals who act as their caregivers may encounter behavioral challenges as they seek to address the result of what years of abuse and trauma have created. However, as placements progress over time, the foster child may also become an integrated member of the foster family and thus attachments are formed. As a result, foster parents may experience the significant impacts of managing severe and challenging behaviors as well as breaking strong attachments with the foster child who has largely become family. Therefore, the intent of this research study was to gauge how managing behavioral challenges and forming attachments with foster children may impact the families in non-kinship placements, emotionally as well as psychologically. Furthermore, it was important to determine if these impacts additionally served as deterrents for foster families to continue their placements. The process of data collection consisted of interviews conducted with foster parents individually as well as a couple when applicable, with a previously established interview protocol serving as a guiding framework. The interviews were then transcribed and assessed for emerging themes, commonalities as well as discrepancies. Lastly, the psychological and emotional impacts of managing behavioral challenges and forming attachments were identified and discussed. As the findings indicate, despite their intensity, these impacts did not serve to deter participants from continuing their role as foster parents. Overall, the findings of the present study were largely consistent with previously cited research and provided additional implications as well as recommendations for future policy and practice
What is work? Insights from the evolution of state foster care
No full textThis article focuses on state foster care as a case study in the (re)configuration and negotiation of boundaries between work and non-work. Foster care can be seen as occupying a liminal position between the domains of ‘work’ and ‘family’, requiring management of the tensions presumed to exist between competing value systems. Through a review of research and policy developments, the relevant boundary issues are contextualized and explored, drawing examples from areas such as remuneration, taxation and benefits, employment status, work-life balance and the labour process. It is argued that while foster care shares the hybridity and ensuing tensions of care work more generally, the spatial and temporal integration of work and family and the high level of state regulation give them a particular intensity. In turn, this offers great potential for the study of work/non-work boundaries. Possible research avenues are set ou
Accuracy of instructional diagrams for automated external defibrillator pad positioning
No full textIntroduction: Correct defibrillation pad positioning optimises the chances of successful defibrillation. AEDs have pictoral representation to guide untrained bystanders in correct pad positioning. There is a wide variation in this pictoral guidance and evidence suggests that correct anatomical pad placement is poor. We reviewed all currently available diagrams and assessed the resultant pad placement achieved by untrained bystanders following these instructions. Methods: Twenty untrained bystanders were presented with a total of 27 different pad placement diagrams (including one designed by the researchers)in a random sequence and were asked to apply them to the chest of an adult manikin. The lateral/medial and cranial/caudal position in relation to the optimal position recommended by the European Resuscitation Council guidelines was then measured for each pair of pads. Results: Overall, the sternal pad was placed an average of 6.0 mm cranial to, and 3.2 mm medial to, the optimal position. The apical pad was placed an average of 78.2 mm caudal to, and 59.3 mm medial to, the optimal position. The pad position diagram we designed and assessed out performed existing diagrams. Conclusion: All current defibrillation pad diagrams fail to achieve accurate defibrillation pad placement. A clearer, more effective diagram, such as the one we designed, is urgently needed to ensure bystander defibrillation is effective as possible.</p
Using Private Contracts to Create Adoptions from Foster Care
No full textCreating adoptions for children waiting in foster care is a good investment, but the number of adoptions created each year meets only a fraction of the need. This paper explores how the organization of the delivery of social services to waiting children and prospective adoptive families influences adoption creation. Cross-section time-series estimates are supplemented with a new augmented fixed effects procedure to demonstrate that the use of contracts with private agencies bolsters adoption creation. Contracts for recruitment and orientation of prospective adoptive parents are particularly effective.adoption, child welfare, fixed effects vector decomposition, foster care, privatization
Specialist foster care for traumatised young people with challenging behaviour: Appraising joined up service provision
No full textThis thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.It is recognised that looked after young people with a history of trauma, offending, emotional, behavioural and educational difficulties often face a high risk of social exclusion later in life. Against this background an innovative and intensive fostering service was developed by a large charitable organization. The intention was to provide community based foster care placements as an alternative to residential and secure accommodation and an external evaluation was commissioned. The thesis grew out of the main research evaluation. This small scale case study has the separate aim of exploring how far the provision of specialist foster care placements together with appropriate services can help young people to achieve stability. This question is considered through an analysis of the organisational relationships, the model for service delivery, the implementation of the key services and their impact on the service users. The methodology and research approach used questionnaires and in-depth recorded interviews. The study has been personalised by including the voices of the organisation's key stakeholders and service users. With the introduction of recent legislation that places an emphasis on inter-agency and multi-professional working, the thesis seeks to draw out lessons from the case study on the opportunities and constraints of joined-up service delivery. It also aims to inform current policy and practice which is now shifting towards the provision of specialist foster care, rather than residential care for difficult young people. The findings indicate that achieving integrated service delivery and multi-professional working is a complex task. The study has provided a broad understanding about all aspects of service delivery, together with the views of the service providers and the service users. Finally, the thesis makes recommendations for the improvement of inter-agency co-operation and front line service delivery to ensure that young people and their families receive the services they need
The Tertiary collision-related thermal history of the NW Himalaya
No full textGarnet-whole rock Sm-Nd data are presented for several samples from the Indian plate in the NW Himalaya. These dates, when combined with the P-T evolution of the Indian plate rocks, allow a thorough reconstruction of the prograde thermal evolution of this region (including the Nanga Parbat Haramosh Massif) during the early Cenozoic. Combining these data with Rb-Sr mineral separate ages, enables us to constrain the post-peak cooling history of this region of the Himalaya.
The data presented here indicate that the upper structural levels of the cover rocks of the Nanga Parbat Haramosh Massif, and similar rocks in the Kaghan Valley to the south-west, were buried to pressures of c. 10 kbar and heated to temperatures of c. 650 °C at 46–41 Ma. The burial of the lower structural levels of the cover rocks of the Nanga Parbat Haramosh Massif, to similar depths but at higher temperatures of c. 700 °C, occurred slightly later at 40–36 Ma, synchronous with the imbrication and exhumation of the amphibolite- and eclogite-grade rocks of the Kaghan Valley. In contrast, the cover rocks of the Nanga Parbat Haramosh Massif were not imbricated or exhumed at this time, remaining buried beneath the Kohistan-Ladakh Island Arc until the syntaxis-forming event that occurred in the last 10 Myr. The timing of tectonic events in the north-western Himalaya differs from that experienced by the rocks of the Central Himalaya in that the earliest stage of burial in the NW Himalaya predates that of the Central Himalaya by c. 6 Myr. This difference may result from the diachronous nature of the Indo-Asian collision or may simply be a reflection of differing timing at different structural levels
Exploratory study of risks to stability in foster and kinship care in NSW
No full textThis report describes an exploratory study on various aspects and risks to stability in foster and kinship placements.The report finds that compared to foster care, risks to placement stability are more evident for kinship care. Kinship carers (predominantly grandparents) are older and few have formal agency support. They cope, some not easily, with challenging situations as they arise (e.g. death/separation/divorce of partner/spouse, their birth children’s substance abuse problems, children’s challenging behaviours, their own and grandchildren’s medical conditions). The concept of older carers ‘parenting again’ should not be taken lightly. For many carers there is a continuation and increase in daily housework chores and child care routines, with little time for leisure activities, holidays, hobbies and personal time. Parenting again also requires older carers to make significant changes in the way they conform/adapt to contemporary practices around parenting, child discipline and education. Common themes suggested by foster and kinship carers for keeping placements stable were providing children with routines and boundaries; developing/maintaining strong relationships (with workers, family and birth family); receiving respite; and being supported by workers
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