Is it that we are afraid to ask? A scoping review about sons and daughters of foster parents

Abstract

Research on foster care focuses almost exclusively on maltreated youth and, to a lesser extent, on foster parents. There is very limited information about the experiences and outcomes of the sons and daughters of parents who choose to foster. The objective of this scoping review was to systematically identify and describe existing empirical research on sons and daughters of foster parents as a beginning effort at understanding this large but understudied population of children and youth. A comprehensive search was conducted that included four key sources: scholarly databases, hand-searches of reference lists, Google Scholar, and personal communications with key foster care stakeholders from North America, South America, Europe, and Australia. All empirical studies within samples that were comprised of sons and daughters of foster parents were included. Over 5500 articles were screened for inclusion. After removing the studies that were not about sons and daughters of foster parents, articles that did not match the inclusion criteria, articles that could not be located, and duplicates, there were 46 articles that met the inclusion criteria describing 39 different studies. An analysis of these indicates that: this literature is in the early stages of knowledge development; interviews/focus groups dominate data collection methods; nonprobability samples are almost always used; even basic demographic data is scarce; and the relationships among and between all participants in the fostering process likely to affect the quality of the fostering experience. As the first scoping review on sons and daughters of foster parents, this study describes much of the known research about this sub-population within foster homes. The results indicate that, more than a century after the first foster homes were established, we are still in the dark ages with respect to the experiences of this sub-population. This article provides a resource for researchers and practitioners to further develop this neglected area of child welfare services.