The construction of the Foster family support model to prevent the cancellation of placement

Abstract

In the majority of developed countries, children who are abused, neglected or cannot live with their parents for other reasons, are placed in foster homes. Japanese social foster care has traditionally been centred around institutional care. This led to the United Nations making recommendations for improvement and in response, Japan announced 'The Issues and Future Vision of Social Foster Care' in 2011 and a 'New Vision of Social Foster Care' to increase the foster parent placement rate in 2017. Professor Kayoko Ito, from the Faculty of Social Welfare and Education at Osaka Prefecture University in Japan, has assembled a team of researchers to work on a project that seeks to build a system for supporting foster parents and promote home-based care by foster parents. The intention is that this system will eliminate the burden of raising a foster child and thereby reduce the incidence of giving up, resulting in an overall improvement in foster care in Japan.