Married couple, Marika & Kurt chat about the many perspectives in foster care and the ways we can all do better by our kids
In our first season, we focus on an oft overlooked part of the US Foster Care system - Transitions.
We start our first interview today with the most important person in Foster Care - the kids. Jean is a FFY (former foster youth - she's an adult now) who went into the system at age 9.
We talk with her about her experience and how it has affected her life. We ask her the most important question of all - How did changing homes impact you? What could the grown ups have done to make transitions easier?
Our podcast features music by Chris Haugen "Tupelo Train"
And graphic design by Kenney Ogilvie
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The paper we mention in this episode called "The Children Were Fine" can be downloaded from their website www.thechildrenwerefine.co.uk
Here's what they say about the studies they've undertaken:
"As child psychotherapists working within a Looked After Children’s team, we became concerned about the ways in which children were being moved from foster care into adoption. In our view this was being done very quickly, and with very little contact between children and their foster carers afterwards.
Finding a complete lack of research into this area, we carried out a piece of qualitative research, interviewing foster carers, adopters and social workers to analyse in detail five children’s moves into adoption. We found that the emotional experience of the child, particularly their experience of losing their foster carer, became less prominent in people’s minds during this transition. In what is a highly anxious time for the adults we found that for very understandable reasons they lost sight of what was happening emotionally for the child.
We hope this research will generate some much needed debate and further research into children’s moves into adoption, or indeed any move from one carer to another. We believe what is needed is a better integration of theory and practice so that we become more sensitive to children’s experiences during this transition, keeping the emotional experience of the child central in people’s minds."
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