Suchergebnisse

This article assesses one of the key assumptions underlying the philosophy of permanency planning—that placement instability adversely affects the psychosocial development of children in foster care. Method: The placement movements and psychosocial well-being of foster care were assessed over an 8-month period. Results: Most of the children who remained in care throughout the period could be assigned to one of three groups: 1 (stable throughout), 2 (unstable throughout), 3 (initially unstable, then stable) Results for these 120 children were generally consistent with a linear trend toward improvement in Groups 1 and 2, whereas Group 3 children displayed improvement only while their placements were unstable. Conclusions: Although results for Group 3 permit more than one interpretation, results for Group 2 suggest that placement instability up to at least the 8-month point is not necessarily damaging to the child.

The South Australian foster care system is plagued by problems of both supply and demand. Decreases in the availability of residential care and suitably trained foster carers has led to a shortage of placements to meet current demand. At the same time, increased selectivity in the intake of children into care has led to an over-concentration of more challenging children who either cannot be placed in foster care, or are being placed with the support of significantly higher loadings or payments. In this paper, it is argued that these problems can be understood conceptually using basic micro-economic principles, namely: demand-supply curve analysis, separation of market segments, and supply elasticity. It is argued that the supply of placements has become increasingly price-inelastic due to the nature of demand (the type of child), and that increasing short-term payment rates only serves to magnify the problem by artificially maintaining unsuitable care arrangements. Alternative solutions, such as the introduction of training and professional foster carers, are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to examine the degree of disruption experienced by 235 children aged 4–17 years placed into substitute care in South Australia during 1998–1999. Key measures of disruption included: the frequency of placement changes, the number of children forced to change school, the geographical distance from birth families, and the amount of planned contact between children and families during the placement. Parental contact was reduced when children were victims of abuse, but more likely when children were placed because of parental incapacity. Changes in school were more likely when children were older or were placed a long way from their families. Geographical dislocation was, as expected, more likely to be a feature of rural placements, although there were no rural-metropolitan differences in the nature and frequency of family contact. The implications of these findings for future research are discussed.