The purpose of this essay was to look into whether any attention is paid to the biological children in foster families when the investigation about foster home is made. I did some qualitative interviews with six foster home-investigators, working in five different municipalities. Some of the main questions have been: Do the investigator meet the biological children during an investigation? Are the children´s opinions taken into consideration? Is the suitability of a foster home judged even from the biological children´s perspective?It was shown that it could happen that a foster home was not approved, if it for some reasons should be a negative experience for the biological children, if a foster child would be placed in their home. All the six persons in my interviews thought that it is important to take the biological children´s opinions into consideration, and that the family is not suitable to be a foster home if not all of the family members have a positive attitude.

The purpose of this study was to give a picture of how some adults, who earlier was placed in foster homecare, experience that their childhood have affected them during their life. I also wanted to see how the relationship to the biological family has been and developed during the placement. The study has also purposed to receive a deeper knowledge of how it could be to grow up in foster care. To make the purpose of this study complete I chose to use qualitative interviews as a research method. Four adults who earlier were placed in foster homecare have participated in this study.

The purpose of this essay was to examine, from a gender perspective, how biological children in foster families experience the situation of living with foster siblings. The material consists of ten interviews. We searched answers to the questions:1. In what way have the biological childrens relations to parents, biological siblings and foster siblings changed through the placement?2.

The purpose of this study was to examine how some child welfare case workers say they go about to give children in Foster homes the opportunity to be heard. The idea was also to examine how much weight is given to the children?s views and if the respondents believe that the childrens right to be heard has improved over the time they have been working with foster children and if so, how? The study was conducted by using qualitative research method and the analysis of the results was made using Shier?s model of childrens participation. The results have also been tied to previous research in the area. The conclusions of this study was that according to the respondents it?s important that they get to know the children well so that the children can have confidence enough to speak their minds.

Children, who grow up in families, where their parents have decided to take care of a foster child on a commission of the social welfare services, are not often given the possibility to tell about their experience of having foster siblings, in research and other studies. The aim of this study was to give biological children, in these families, a chance to tell their narratives of growing up with foster siblings, creating opportunities for families, who might have plans to take care of foster children in the future. They can get a picture of how it could be for the family´s own children. The biological children got the opportunity to tell their narrative stories including the relationships in their families and how they were looking forward into their own future and family life. The used theory takes part in systemic thinking, looking at the family as an organization and how identities are created in relationships and in communication.

Focusing of what´s best for the child has been a keyword in social work for a long time. That seems obvious for many people, but sometimes it lacks in the care of the children and the child may be taken in to care. The purpose was to find circumstances of success that can contribute to a successful placement of the child according to social workers and foster families. In which way does the cooperation between social worker, foster family and the origin family affect the placement? The study is based upon a qualitative method in form of interviews intending to get the respondents own knowledge and experience of foster care.

The academic underachievement of looked after children is well known. By involving foster carers in a Paired Reading intervention a Swedish project tried to address this issue, replicating a successful British trial. The aim of my thesis was to study the variations in the foster carers? experiences of this literacy intervention. Reading reports from 100 children were collected and qualitative interviews with 15 foster parents were analyzed using concepts from motivational psychology.

The aim of this essay was to investigate how social workers, within chosen Social services districts in the northwest of Skåne, work with children placed in foster care. Our purpose was to investigate the interaction between the child and the foster home from the perspective of the Ecology of Human Development. Our questions were:* How do the social worker prepare the child and the foster home before a placement?* What kind of support is offered to the foster home with the purpose of supporting the child?* How do the social worker make the childs contact with the biological parents easier?* To what degree does the social worker work on strengthening the child's network?* Which factors do the social worker decide the allocation of support?* What do the social worker think affects the work with the foster home from a society level?To answer our question we have interviewed nine social workers. We found that the social workers were generally good at perceiving how the micro- and meso-systems, and to a certain extent the exo-system, influenced the foster child.

The educational underachievement of children in foster care has been known for a long time. This study aimed to compile and analyze the current knowledge about interventions, intended to improve foster children?s school achievements. The method used was a systematically undertaken narrative review. Despite a comprehensive searching strategy, only ten relevant studies were found, indicating that little has been done to improve the educational outcomes for children in public care.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine the different ways thatFamiljehemscentrum use to increase the number of families that show interest in takingcare of foster children. This thesis will examine which families are targeted by Familjehemscentrums present communication, which families they should target in thefuture and also the best way to do that. In order to answer these questions a number of interviews were conducted. The first interview was a group interview with three social workers that all work at Familjehemscentrum. Three more individual interviews were conducted with representatives from foster families to investigate how they were recruitedand what they think about being a foster family.

This qualitative study is about motivation and experience of support among non-kinship fosterparents in a child welfare agency (NGO), in Paraguay. The empirical data where collectedthrough out six semi-structured qualitative interviews, with totally eight foster parentsparticipating. The aim of the study was to describe and analyze what motivates foster parentsand how they experience support from their formal and informal network. Further theobjective was to investigate how support (may) affect motivation and enable good foster care.Theoretical concepts such as solidarity, intrinsic and extrinsic motivations as well as socialsupport where used to analyze the data.The results show that there are many different motives and motivations (intrinsic andextrinsic) that correlate in the decision to become and continue to be a foster parent. Amongthem social involvement, the wish to make a difference in a child?s life, have something tooffer as a family and personal satisfaction seems to be the most frequent reasons.

The purpose of this essay was to examine and compare what attitudes Swedish and Belgian social workers may have towards residential care and foster care for children and young people. To answer the purpose eight qualitative interviews with four Swedish and four Belgian social workers were made. The results were analyzed by theory of organization and professional acting space. The results of the study show that the social workers in both countries preferred foster care, especially for small children, and that the Swedish social workers had a more negative attitude towards residential care than the Belgian social workers. Even though the Belgian social workers preferred foster care, they found themselves forced to choose residential care due to lack of available foster care facilities, something that did not seem to affect the Swedish social workers.

New family stuctures are constantly emerging in society. Are these changes mirrored in foster care practice? The aim of this study was to explore to what extent homosexual families are represented when a child is given a foster home. The nuclear family has throughout history been assured a stable position both in society as well as in the foster care practice. During the last ten years a homosexual relationship has been legaly accepted through different amendents and it has also been more integrated and accepted in society.

Syftet med vår studie var att få en inblick i hur familjehemsföräldrar ser på sitt uppdrag utifrån följande frågeställningar:Vilka motiv och förväntningar finns till att vilja bli familjehem?Hur har uppdraget som familjehem påverkat relationerna i familjen?Har familjehemmen avlastning eller behov av det?Vilken syn har familjehemmen på handledning?Hur resonerar familjehemmen kring den ekonomiska ersättningen?Studien genomfördes med utgångspunkt i kvalitativa intervjuer, där vi tillsammans intervjuade 9 olika familjehem knutna till Kristianstads kommun. I 7 av intervjuerna medverkade båda familjehemsföräldrarna, i 2 intervjuer medverkade den ena familjehemsföräldern; sammanlagt 16 respondenter.Intervjuerna transkriberades, analyserades och presenterades sedan på två olika sätt. Utifrån meningskategorisering presenterades resultatet dels i idealtyper samt tematiskt utifrån citat.Familjehemsföräldrarna i vår studie har en samsyn som par i hur de ser på sitt uppdrag, och att de arbetar väl tillsammans. I vår studie fann vi 5 olika idealtyper, som illustrerar hur de ser på olika frågor.

Placing children in foster care is today considered the best alternative for children unable to stay in their biological environment. A nuclear family consisting of a father, a mother and a child is the most common family structure within foster care today. The purpose of this thesis is to gain insight on the family norms that control the foster care system. It's a qualitative study based on interviews with six professional social workers within the field of foster care. This method gave us empirical material, that was later analyzed from two main theories and one theoretical concept.