Derek Kirton

Foster Carer Training: Resources, Payment and Support

This article by Kate Ogilvie, Derek Kirton and Jennifer Beecham examines key aspects of training for foster carers, using quantitative and qualitative data from a study of remuneration and performance in foster care. Three main issues are discussed: the training undertaken by foster carers and whether it is thought adequate; foster carer and supervising social worker views on NVQ level 3 training and payment for skills schemes; and how foster carers can be encouraged to attend training regularly. The study found fairly high levels of participation in training among foster carers who generally expressed satisfaction with its quality. However, very few agencies had clear training strategies. NVQ training was broadly welcomed but concern was expressed regarding its suitability for all foster carers and its relationship to high-quality foster care. There was scope for improving attendance through attention to organisational issues such as venues, timing of courses and availability of child care. Finally, the relevance of training to debates on professionalisation and the place of foster carers within the childrens workforce are considered.

Searching, reunion and transracial adoption

Derek Kirton, Julia Feast and David Howe Report on findings from qualitative interviews with transracially adopted adults, carried out as part of a research project by The Childrens Society. Findings show that those adopted transracially shared many experiences with other adopted people, including almost invariably feeling that they have gained from searching and/or reunion. For many transracially adopted people, issues of racial and ethnic identity figured prominently within motivation for searching, but their needs and aspirations in this regard often went unmet. Finally, the implications of the research for family placement work and post-adoption services are considered.

After All These Years: accessing care records

While there has been a growing body of research into the experiences of adopted people who approach agencies seeking information or contact with birth relatives, little is known about those formerly in care who access agency records. The findings here, reported by Derek Kirton, Erica Peltier and Elizabeth Webb, derive from a file analysis relating to adults previously in the care of The Childrens Society who had sought access to their care records. The aim of the study was to find out more about the care careers of this group and their reasons for contacting the Society. By comparison with their adopted counterparts, those formerly in care tend to access records later in life and are more evenly balanced in terms of gender. The analysis revealed widely divergent careers in care for black and white enquirers respectively, with the former spending longer in care and being much less likely to be in contact, or reunited with their birth families. Implications for practice are then discussed, especially the need to develop post-care services which can help to meet the longer-term identity needs of adults formerly in care.

A Childhood on Paper: managing access to child care files by post-care adults

Although the potential importance of care-file information for those formerly in care has long been recognised, little is known about requests for access to such records, whether in terms of scale or how requests are dealt with. The survey reported here by Jim Goddard, Julia Feast and Derek Kirton was carried out to address this gap. It was conducted in two stages during 2004 and 2005. The first stage comprised a postal questionnaire to local authorities in the UK (with 81 responses received) and a small number of voluntary organisations. This was followed by 40 telephone interviews with key local authority and voluntary sector personnel dealing with access to records requests. Areas of interest within the study included: policy and practice in relation to the retention, storage and retrieval of files; the handling of requests, including by whom; the provision of services (eg counselling and intermediary help); and the impact of the Data Protection Act 1998 on the handling of access requests. Two related themes emerged. First, policy, practice and service provision vary enormously between agencies, creating a ‘post-code lottery’ for post-care adults. Second, such provision is often poor in comparison with that offered to adopted adults, thereby raising the question of whether the current legal and policy framework for access to care records is adequate.

Step forward? Step back? The professionalisation of fostering

This article examines the long term if uneven trend towards professionalisation in foster care, within the contexts of theoretical debates on professionalisation and contemporary policy in relation to looked after children. While the professionalising trend has been driven by a number of powerful factors within foster care and by broader societal and policy developments, it remains contentious due to the hybrid nature of foster care straddling the domains of ‘family’ and ‘work’. Various aspects of hybridity are explored including its implications for motivation, training and differentiation among foster carers. While broadly supporting the professionalisation of foster carers, not least as a measure to tackle their exploitation and its gendered nature, it is argued that hybridity requires a delicate balance to be struck and maintained in order that further professionalising measures do not undermine the personal and familial aspects of foster care that are crucial to its success.

A Childhood on Paper: Accessing Care Records under the Data Protection Act 1998

Background Over the years, we have learned how crucial it is for adopted people to be able to access information about their origins and family background and this has been reflected in the development of a legislative framework, established services and practice. However, little attention has been given to the information needs and rights of people who have been brought up in care, for whom accessing information can be equally important for a variety of reasons. These include the formation of a coherent adult identity (Stein and Carey, 1986; Biehal et al, 1995). Both research and services in this field lag far behind those in relation to adults who were adopted as children (Kirton et al, 2001). Every year, between 6,000 and 7,000 young people leave care in England and many others leave at earlier ages. Extrapolating from such figures, a conservative estimate would suggest that there are approximately 350,000 adults in the UK as a whole who spent part or all of their childhood in care. Each of them will have had a care file during that time. Later in life, some of these adults request access to such files, held by local authorities or voluntary agencies, in attempts to answer questions about their past. Since the passage of the Data Protection Act (DPA)1998, local authorities have been provided with new and clear guidance for the maintenance and accessibility of records (Department of Health, 2000). At present, little is known about the quality and extent of the information that enquirers are able to receive under the Act. In 2004, the British Academy agreed to fund a research project that represents the first attempt to try to fill that knowledge gap through a national survey of local authorities (and some voluntary providers) on their ‘access to records’ procedures for adults who have formerly been in care. This brief paper reports the interim results from that project. Legislation and research The DPA allows access by former care adults (subject to some restrictions, which will be discussed below) to all such care files. Earlier legislation, notably the Access to Records Act 1987 and the Access to Personal Files (Social Services) Regulations 1989, allowed individuals to know what was recorded about them in local authority manual files, but was not retrospective and did not apply to the voluntary sector. However, the situation changed significantly following the European Court of Human Rights decision in the case of Gaskin v UK [12 ECHR 36; 7 July 1989]. The Court ruled that Graham Gaskin’s rights under Article 8 (to respect for one’s private and family life) of the European Convention had been breached by Liverpool City Council’s refusal to grant him access to his care records. Gaskin, who had suffered a history of abuse in care (MacVeigh, 1982), successfully argued that such information was necessary in order to understand his identity and childhood experiences. While many agencies in the voluntary and state sector were sympathetic to those requesting access, practice was highly variable. Record storage was equally variable and our research has confirmed that, prior to 1988, records were often destroyed, as a matter of policy, after a certain period. Research has shown that the number of adults formerly in care who seek access to their records is small in comparison with adopted adults (Howe and Feast, 2000; Kirton et al, 2001). The reasons for this remain unknown. Is it a lack of curiosity or simply that they do not know that such information exists? The huge upsurge in demand for files access following the BBC’s screening of Barnardo’s Children in 1995 clearly suggests that the latter is a major factor (Pugh, 1999).

Race, Adoption and Tomorrow's Social Workers

Derek Kirton summarises responses from student social workers to a questionnaire on attitudes to race and adoption. The respondents were mainly second-year Social Work (DipSW) students specialising in work with children and families. Two key findings emerged from the survey. Firstly, questions of race and adoption evoke very diverse responses, with an overall tendency towards ‘soft’ support for same-race adoption. Secondly, perspectives are significantly divided according to ethnicity, with minority ethnic social work students markedly more in favour of same-race adoption than their white counterparts. In conclusion, Kirton outlines the possible implications of these findings for adoption policy and practice.

A Suitable Case?: Implementing Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care in an English Local Authority

This article by Derek Kirton and Cliff Thomas draws from a local evaluation of a multidimensional treatment foster care (MTFC) programme in England, focusing particularly on issues of implementation. These include experiences of working with the Oregon Social Learning model on which MTFC is based, its theory, philosophy and practices. The article also considers the translation of this model into a UK context and the associated questions of adaptation and fidelity. The challenges of multidisciplinary teamwork and interagency collaboration within MTFC are explored, along with the latters place within wider child welfare provision. Particular challenges highlighted are those of transitions into and from MTFC and the role of childrens social workers. Albeit from a small-scale study and with inevitable variation in outcomes, it was found that MTFC achieved significant gains for a number of young people with complex needs and often troubled histories. This, in turn, raises questions about how far its theory and practice could or should be extended within foster care provision.

Neo-liberal racism: Excision, ethnicity and the Children and Families Act 2014

This article focuses on the removal in the Children and Families Act 2014 of the so-called ‘ethnicity clause’ relating to adoption. Reviewing the background to the contentious issue of adoption for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic children and the coalition’s drive to increase its scale, the article analyses the discursive resources deployed – especially during the Bill’s passage through Parliament – to justify, oppose or modify the legal change. It is argued that the emergent government policy can be seen as incoherent, even contradictory in relation to ethnicity and its significance and that this can be understood through the competing aims of striking a populist blow against ‘political correctness’ while staving off accusations of being ‘naïve’ (or worse) about race and ethnicity. These developments and debates are also analysed in the context of the growing power of racial neo-liberalism in shaping debates on child welfare.

What is work? Insights from the evolution of state foster care

This article focuses on state foster care as a case study in the (re)configuration and negotiation of boundaries between work and non-work. Foster care can be seen as occupying a liminal position between the domains of ‘work’ and ‘family’, requiring management of the tensions presumed to exist between competing value systems. Through a review of research and policy developments, the relevant boundary issues are contextualized and explored, drawing examples from areas such as remuneration, taxation and benefits, employment status, work-life balance and the labour process. It is argued that while foster care shares the hybridity and ensuing tensions of care work more generally, the spatial and temporal integration of work and family and the high level of state regulation give them a particular intensity. In turn, this offers great potential for the study of work/non-work boundaries. Possible research avenues are set out.