Assessment in Kinship Foster Care: A New Tool to Evaluate the Strengths and Weaknesses

Nuria Fuentes-Peláez,Crescencia Pastor,Maribel Mateo,Pere Amorós,María Molina

doi:10.3390/socsci4010001

Abstract

Placement in kinship family has existed informally throughout time. There are many countries in which kinship family care is the most common measure used for child protection. However, it is a subject of continuous debate. One of the major issues is that kinship foster care is relied upon without carrying out an evaluation study of the family; often the child is placed directly with grandparents and uncles simply because they are direct family. This article presents an assessment tool to evaluate extended families in order to ensure the welfare of the child. The tool was created as a result of the cooperative research of 126 professionals from seven regions of Spain. The tool can identify the strengths and weaknesses of families by considering six factors: personal characteristics, the coverage of basic needs, collaboration with professionals, the family structure and dynamics, the relationship between family, child, and biological family, and, finally, the attitude towards the placement. The assessment tool is innovative and introduces the opportunity to consider the skills of the kinship foster care family, the needs of support, and which families are unfit to take care of the child. To conclude, the tool tries to overcome one of the principal disadvantages of kinship foster care: the lack of knowledge about the kinship family.

Highlights

In Spain, extended family foster care has existed informally throughout history, but it did not become systematized and generalized until the Law 21/1987 [1]
The difficulties of recruiting unrelated foster families for foster care, the recognition that kinship foster care responds to a philosophy of family preservation, the benefits in terms of stability, the challenge of providing social support for families with difficulties, and the problem of economic compensation tied to other types of foster care are some of the factors that have led to a change in attitude, policy, and practice in some countries
Research demonstrates that kinship foster care has benefits for children in terms of stability, continuity, and the child’s emotional development, despite its complexities such as the management of the relationship with parents, an environment of lower quality, and a greater need for support

Summary

Introduction

In Spain, extended family foster care has existed informally throughout history, but it did not become systematized and generalized until the Law 21/1987 [1]. Kinship foster care in Spain has not been exempt from polemic Many professionals perceived it to be an insufficient option, because of the beliefs that mistreatment was transmitted intergenerationally [2,3,4] and that these are poorer quality foster care placements, as well as worries that kinship caregivers may collude with parents outside of the case planning [5]. The difficulties of recruiting unrelated foster families for foster care, the recognition that kinship foster care responds to a philosophy of family preservation, the benefits in terms of stability, the challenge of providing social support for families with difficulties, and the problem of economic compensation tied to other types of foster care are some of the factors that have led to a change in attitude, policy, and practice in some countries. The increase has occurred in countries as diverse as Holland [7], Spain [8,9], Sweden [10], the United Kingdom [11,12], and the United States [13]

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