'Fascinating and sensitive account of the everyday processes of parenting and foster family life - readers will find the book interesting, instructive and inspiring.' Professor Malcolm Hill, Director, Centre for the Child and Society, University of Glasgow (from the Foreword)
This study records progress over three years of the group first met in Growing Up in Foster Care. Meeting the children's social services objective of 'ensuring that all children are securely attached to carers capable of providing safe and effective care for the duration of childhood' is a major challenge for children in long-term foster care and their carers and this study shows how one group is rising to that challenge.
Children in long-term foster care are likely to have come from backgrounds of loss and adversity. They have often had to manage difficult experiences by building defences that make them hard to reach emotionally. They need the experience of sensitive parenting and a secure base that will contain their anxieties, heal their sense of hurt, build self-esteem and make them confident and competent in the world of family, school, peer group and community.
This book movingly describes the varied ways in which foster carers were reaching out to the children - often in the face of wariness and doubt - and how many of the children were beginning to relinquish some of their more troubled behaviours and to accept the possibility that they were loved and lovable.
Extensive use of first-hand accounts from the children and carers gives richness and depth to a study which will inspire social workers, foster carers and other professionals concerned with the stability and security of children in long-term foster families.
Contents include:
Setting the scene: the significance of a secure base, reviewing the children's stability and progress
Long-term foster children: patterns of change for "open book", "closed book", "on the edge" and "rewarding" children
Dimensions of parenting in long-term foster care: providing availability, promoting reflective capacity, building self-esteem, promoting autonomy and family membership
Supporting and valuing long-term foster care: the role of the local authority and the therapeutic task of providing a secure base
