Kimberlea Cooper, Christina Sadowski, Rob Townsend
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Objective
This constructivist-grounded-theory study explored how foster and kinship carers conceptualize and experience their role.
Background
Internationally, amid growing emphasis on home-based care for children and young people living outside parental care, issues such as carer shortages, dissatisfied carers, and placement instability present significant challenges.
Method
Sixteen carers (seven foster carers and nine kinship carers) from a regional area in Victoria, Australia, participated in in-depth interviews following constructivist-grounded-theory protocols.
Results
Six categories reveal the central ways carers go about caring for children and young people and the main challenges they face in doing so. The core category of “being a parent, but not” demonstrates tensions that carers experience in trying to establish a sense of belonging and connectedness with a child, within the limits of the Victorian home-based care system.
Conclusion
Home-based carers view their role through a parental lens, but with various limitations that restrict their sense of being a parent.
Implications
The current research acknowledges the role tensions inherent within the Victorian home-based care system and emphasizes the importance of raising the status of foster and kinship carers to provide more recognition of the expertise they hold in the care of children and young people within this complex context.
期刊介绍:
A premier, applied journal of family studies, Family Relations is mandatory reading for family scholars and all professionals who work with families, including: family practitioners, educators, marriage and family therapists, researchers, and social policy specialists. The journal"s content emphasizes family research with implications for intervention, education, and public policy, always publishing original, innovative and interdisciplinary works with specific recommendations for practice.