A sense of belonging in a changeable everyday life – a follow‐up study of young people in kinship, network, and traditional foster families

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis in‐depth follow‐up study of 15 foster youth shows the importance of an ‘open foster family’, open to letting the foster youth into the family life and to cooperating with the adolescent's birth family. Previous findings about the importance of negotiations, mutual rituals, and having fun together in foster families for the creation of social bonds and belonging are strengthened in the follow‐up interview. A lack of these mutual practices is observed prior to disruptions. Most adolescents still living with the same foster family feel a sense of belonging to both their foster and birth families, especially when both families cooperate. This is most evident in kinship families. Over time, adolescents in traditional foster families have also strengthened their social bonds to the foster family, which makes the difference to youth in network foster families less pronounced than in the previous study. Despite life changes, above all changing schools and peers, most adolescents reveal personal agency by still coping with their situation. However, therapeutic support is now more common than 1 year ago, for girls in particular. Methods used are interviews, network maps and text responses (‘beepers’).