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.

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 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 purpose of this study has been to investigate which factors are important with foster home placing, to achieve a positive result for the child. The questions that we have focused on is the importance of the child's earlier experiences and relations, the foster homes attitude and approach, the social service organization and the cooperation between these concerned parties. We have also looked at the importance that the relation between the biological family, the child and the foster home can have. This study has been carried out using qualitative interviews with several foster homes, social welfare secretaries and a researcher in the area. We have also chosen to separate the foster homes on the basis of two foster homes only accepting teenagers while other accepting younger children.The theoretical concepts we have chosen to use are connected to attachment theory and the ecology of human development point of view.

The aim of the study is to describe social workers discretion when it comes to the relation between children placed away from home and their biological parents.The study describes how the social worker designs the contacts with the biological parents, for instance the extension for the actual meeting. The results are based on six interviews conducted with social workers who work with foster children. They have responded to questions related to the contact between children and their biological parent. The questions are based on eight vignettes. The contents of the vignettes show different conditions that affect the contact, for example age and foster care attitudes The results of the study have been compared to other previous research in discretion of the social worker and contacts between children and their biological parents.In summary the study shows that there is  high degree of independence for the social workers designing their work and that their level of discretion.

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 qualitative sociological law study is to examine the relationship between the social services and civil court to apprehend if knowledge about the child's best interest is transfered from social workers to the legal system. This have been done by investigating civil court cases concerning custody transition from biological parents to foster parents according to 6 chapter 8 paragraph in the law of parenting, built upon the legal principle of the best interests of the child. Eight cases has been examined by using a method of qualitative text analysis and categorised into five primary categories and three concepts linked to sections of the law. The material has been analysed through a sociological law perspective, social constructionist theory and attachment theory. The study shows that a variety of factors interacts when it comes to determining what?s in the best interest of the child .

The main aim of this bachelor thesis is to describe through a quantitative study the extent of support received by foster families, their opinion of the support and any areas that might need improvement. The foster families receive foster care support through a private agency. We concentrated on the following areas of support; education, health, contact with the children?s biological relatives and behavioral difficulties. These four areas have, in previous research, shown to be problematic for foster children.

The aim of this study is to examine social workers? experiences of how the ADHD-diagnosis affects their work with children and youths living in foster care and how it affects the individuals and families themselves. The study is built upon five qualitative interviews and the results are analyzed through a theoretical framework that constitutes ADHD as not only the symptoms and the medical disorder but also as a social phenomenon where the disorder is socially constructed by the current society, norms, and knowledge. The study shows that the social workers? do not rely on the sole ADHD-diagnosis in the understanding and guidance of the children and their foster parents, but rather see the individual needs of each children.

Ett stort antal barn är idag placerade i fosterfamilj. Flertalet av dessa barn uppvisar ett asocialt beteende med dåliga sociala relationer. Multidimension Treatment Foster Care (MTFC) är ett program vars mål är att förändra barnets attityd. Det är en öppen vårdinsats där barnet placeras i en utbildad fosterfamilj. En kvalitativ studie genomfördes baserat på nio intervjuer.

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 aim of this study has been to create an understanding for the situation of an often forgotten group in foster care, the carers? own children. Our main focus has been the experience this group has of foster care, their experience of participation in caring for the foster children and their possible need of support and help. Our chosen method has been qualitative interviews with six adult children of foster carers, two men and four women. The theory used in this study has been Sense of Coherence.Our interviewees gave mainly a positive description of being part of a foster family even though they could give examples of difficult situation and of loss.

The main aim of this bachelor thesis is to describe through a quantitative study the extent of support received by foster families, their opinion of the support and any areas that might need improvement. The foster families receive foster care support through a private agency. We concentrated on the following areas of support; education, health, contact with the children?s biological relatives and behavioral difficulties. These four areas have, in previous research, shown to be problematic for foster children.

The aim of this study was to understand the contact between foster homes and social workers, by doing a comparison of the social workers and the foster homes experiences of the cooperation that is between them. We started from three main questions to get an answer to our aim, how the foster homes and the social workers experience the organization of the foster care in the Social Service as an impact of the cooperation, what does the foster homes and the social workers experience as a important fact of a successful placement and finally, how does the foster homes and the social workers experience the supporting and controlling contact that is between them. To get our results we based our study on interviews whit four foster homes and whit four social workers. The analysis was based on one theoretical perspective, Skaus (2007) analytical approach for power and help. As a conclusion we have found out, that the organization of the Social Service has significance for the contact between social workers and foster homes.

The purpose of this study has been to describe and analyze how former foster children experienced foster care which have been filled with maltreatment and neglect and how this has influenced their adult life when it comes to health, education and relationships. We also wanted to study how the former foster children coped with their placement. Furthermore we wanted to study whether there has been any turningpoints during their growth. Finally we wanted to describe how the former foster children experienced the authorities control. To make the purpose of this study complete we chose to use qualitative interviews with six former foster children as our research method.