Case Plans and Care Arrangements

Abstract

Clear and well considered case plans are integral to reunification outcomes. Interviews with caseworkers in temporary family care workers’ explored their accounts of case planning and care arrangements (including contact) and their perceptions of the impact on care arrangements of children’s behaviour and placement breakdown. Addressing substance abuse issues was the most common goal identified by caseworkers. Caseworkers experienced difficulties in setting up and maintaining care arrangements including the location of the carers, the uncertainty of the duration of placement, organising sibling groups, communicating with carers about children’s needs and helping them anticipate the responses of their own children to foster siblings as new members of the household. Matching children’s needs with carer capabilities was challenging particularly where the child had experienced multiple entries to care or placement breakdowns. Caseworkers viewed contact as vitally important in fostering positive attachment and an important context for the ongoing assessment of reunification feasibility—it helped strengthen attachment in many circumstances, but it was not always a positive experience for children in care.