Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Following decades in which professionalisation was widely assumed to be a permanent (and growing) feature of foster care in England, the government signalled a clear anti-professional turn in its 2018 publication Fostering Better Outcomes (FBOs). This rejected the notion that foster carers should be regarded as professionals and indicated that there should be a return to the term foster parent. This article analyses FBO, its feeder reports and evidence submitted by stakeholders to map the shifting debate surrounding professionalisation. This includes both direct commentary on its (de)merits, but also discussion of components such as pay, conditions, motivation, training, expertise, a national college or register and related questions of supporting and valuing foster carers. A number of important flaws are identified within the review process. These include an ahistorical and insular treatment of professionalisation, its conflation with employment, a homogenisation of foster care and deployment of a familial discourse that fails to engage with its complexities and 'hybrid' nature between work and family. The consequence is a confused policy stance where professionalisation is rhetorically rejected while many of its core elements are endorsed. Implications of the anti-professional turn for policy, practice and research in England but also internationally, are discussed.

This article analyses the conflicts over adoption in England, focusing primarily on the reform programme during the years of coalition and subsequent Conservative governments, but recognising important historical antecedents and wider contexts. Various facets of adoption policy are considered, including processes through which children become available for adoption, alternative avenues for 'permanence', legal contestation, 'openness', approval of adoptive parents and the organisation of the adoption system. These, in turn, are examined in the contexts of inequalities and (social) justice, and future prospects are considered. It is argued that while 'adoption wars' have their own distinct features, they demonstrate significant alignment with the wider 'culture wars' between conservative/orthodox and liberal/progressive values.

Although media influence has long been recognised within adoption, there has been relatively little research into the nature of coverage. This article focuses on press articles from five UK national daily newspapers and their Sunday sister papers in the years 2010‒2014. This broadly coincides with the period of Coalition Government in the UK and its focus on adoption reform. Findings reveal strong support for the Government's reform programme, its rationale within child welfare and many of its specific measures, but with some contrasts between individual newspapers and critical comment found almost entirely within one pairing. Particular themes concern excessive bureaucracy and politically motivated opposition to adoption. Race and ethnicity emerge as the most frequently covered issues, dominated by critique of barriers to transracial adoption. Principal themes are often developed with inaccurate, misleading or exaggerated reporting, which in turn raises the question of how adoption agencies might respond to this.

This article explores the significance of 'race' and ethnicity in the relationship between neoliberalism and child welfare in the UK, arguing that this has been somewhat marginal in both policy and academic discussion. It is based on a narrative review of key policy documents and research, and covers a range of services, from family support and child protection, to looked-after children and adoption. An overarching finding is that the influence of racial neoliberalism can readily be detected within a progressive downplaying of 'race' and ethnicity, an emphasis on securitisation, and a frequent counteroffensive against 'political correctness'. Importantly, however, to date, there have been limits and resistance to this influence, and the article concludes with a brief discussion of how this resistance can be built upon.

This article focuses on the removal in the Children and Families Act 2014 of the so-called 'ethnicity clause' relating to adoption. Reviewing the background to the contentious issue of adoption for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic children and the coalition's drive to increase its scale, the article analyses the discursive resources deployed – especially during the Bill's passage through Parliament – to justify, oppose or modify the legal change. It is argued that the emergent government policy can be seen as incoherent, even contradictory in relation to ethnicity and its significance and that this can be understood through the competing aims of striking a populist blow against 'political correctness' while staving off accusations of being 'naïve' (or worse) about race and ethnicity. These developments and debates are also analysed in the context of the growing power of racial neo-liberalism in shaping debates on child welfare.

AbstractThis paper examines the place of ethnicity in local authority foster care in the context of the sufficiency duty to secure adequate local placements for looked after children. The analysis draws on two main sources, namely Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (OFSTED's) annual survey of fostering agencies and inspection reports for around half the local authority fostering services in England. Sufficiency is gauged in two main ways, comparing numbers of black and minority ethnic (BME) foster carers first with numbers of BME looked after children and second, with local adult (age 25–64) populations. Statistical analysis shows very wide variation on both measures and a significant minority of authorities that perform poorly in terms of the ethnic diversity of their foster carers. Inspection reports also vary widely in the degree and nature of attention given to issues of ethnicity with many offering limited (and sometimes no) challenge to poor performance. These findings are discussed within the broader context of recent trends towards de‐emphasizing the significance of ethnicity in child welfare.

This article examines the long term if uneven trend towards professionalisation in foster care, within the contexts of theoretical debates on professionalisation and contemporary policy in relation to looked after children. While the professionalising trend has been driven by a number of powerful factors within foster care and by broader societal and policy developments, it remains contentious due to the hybrid nature of foster care straddling the domains of 'family' and 'work'. Various aspects of hybridity are explored including its implications for motivation, training and differentiation among foster carers. While broadly supporting the professionalisation of foster carers, not least as a measure to tackle their exploitation and its gendered nature, it is argued that hybridity requires a delicate balance to be struck and maintained in order that further professionalising measures do not undermine the personal and familial aspects of foster care that are crucial to its success.

AbstractUsing Ellen Herman's concept of 'kinship by design' (KBD), this paper analyses recent efforts to reform adoption in England, arguing that they represent an attempt to curtail the powers of adoption professionals and their established practices of assessing and responding to risk. Examining policy contexts and relevant research, the paper looks at various facets of contemporary KBD in England as they relate to adoptable children, the treatment of adopters, matching, support and systemic governance of adoption within a mixed economy. From this analysis, it is suggested that the evidence base for many of the reforms is limited and that in important respects represents a 'manufactured crisis' used to justify radical changes, which, in turn, pose significant risks to wider policy and practice in child welfare.