Mary Beek

Providing a secure base: Parenting children in long-term foster family care

This paper reports on a longitudinal study of children growing up in long-term foster family care. It focuses attention on the challenges for foster carers in providing a secure base for foster children in middle childhood and early adolescence, who have come predominantly from backgrounds of abuse, neglect, and psychosocial adversity. Separation and loss in the childrens lives, often through multiple placements, increase the likelihood of difficulties across a range of development. These children tend to be wary, distrustful, and controlling when they enter foster placements, but need from their carers many of the caregiving qualities most commonly described as providing a secure base in infancy. This study describes a model of parenting which uses four caregiving dimensions that are consistent with attachment theory and research: promoting trust in availability, promoting reflective function, promoting self-esteem, and promoting autonomy. A fifth dimension, promoting family membership, is added, as it reflects the need for children in long-term foster family care to experience the security that comes from a sense of identity and belonging. Qualitative data from the study demonstrates the usefulness of this model as a framework for analysis, but also suggests the potential use of such a framework for working with and supporting foster carers.

Growing Up in Foster Care

Research team: Gillian Schofield, Senior Lecturer in Psychosocial Studies, Deputy Director of the Centre for Research on the Child and Family; Mary Beek, Senior Research Associate and social worker at the Adoption and Family Finding Unit in Norfolk; Kay Sargent, Lecturer in Social Work; and, as consultant, Professor June Thoburn, Director of the Centre for Research on the Child and Family Context ‘Growing up in foster care’ is a longitudinal study, this first phase of which has been funded by the Nuffield Foundation. It is a study of 58 children under the age of 12 in new or previously short-term placements which are now planned to be long-term foster placements. Long-term foster care is one of the best kept secrets of the child care system. It didn’t feature in the Children Act 1989 and is not recognised by the LAC materials as a plan. Yet for a small but significant group of vulnerable, older looked after children, for whom return home or adoption is not achievable or not seen as in their best interests, a foster placement may be the only chance they will have of a stable and secure family life. It was for this reason that we felt there was a need to focus on these children and examine current practice in a number of important respects. We are using attachment theory as a way of making sense of what the children bring to the placements from their experiences of caregiving in the birth family and previous placements, and what then happens as relationships develop in the new foster families. We are particularly interested in different insecure patterns and the links with experiences of abuse and neglect. In this respect our project has been part of the range of work based on attachment theory at the University of East Anglia, led by Professor David Howe. (For more details of this theoretical underpinning, see Howe, Brandon, Hinings and Schofield, Attachment Theory: Child maltreatment and family support, Macmillan, 1999.)

Thinking about and managing contact in permanent placements: the differences and similarities between adoptive parents and foster carers

Children permanently separated from their birth families have to manage life-long issues of attachment, identity and loss. This article focuses on the issue of post- placement contact and discusses the qualities of foster carers and adopters that can best help children negotiate such issues when contact occurs. Two linked research studies provide data on young adopted children, and children in middle childhood placed in long-term foster care. Almost all foster children were found to be having frequent face-to-face contact, compared with only a small minority of adopted children. However, face-to-face contact was found to be more straightforward in the adoptive families, largely because such young children had less complex relationships with their birth relatives and easier relationships with their new parents. Adopters were centrally involved in contact meetings and able to act autonomously, whereas the experience of foster carers was much more varied, with some feeling excluded from decision-making. In both placement types, sensitive and empathic thinking and accepting values of foster carers and adopters were vital in helping children use contact meetings to make sense of their membership of two families. When such parental attributes were present, a wide range of contact arrangements could be successful.

Foster carers' perspectives on permanence: a focus group study

There is undoubtedly a need to establish a firm legislative, policy and practice basis for adoption. At the same time, it is recognised that a range of permanence options is required to meet the needs of children for whom adoption is not appropriate, not achievable or against their wishes. Although the Prime Ministers Review of Adoption recommended consultation on all aspects of the Adoption and Children Bill, it was not clear whether there would be mechanisms for consulting foster carers who currently offer permanent placements to children. As a result, the Nuffield Foundation funded a series of three focus groups to take place during the Bills passage through parliament, with a view to contributing to the debate on what might be needed to ensure the effectiveness of the range of permanence options sought by the Government. This paper by Mary Beek and Gillian Schofield is a result of that consultation exercise. However, the richness of the discussions in the groups allowed the authors to go beyond and behind the immediate question of legal options and explore how foster carers view their role in offering children a long-term commitment and a place in their families.

Parenting Children with Attachment Difficulties: Views of Adoptive Parents and Implications for Post-Adoption Services

A growing number of children placed for adoption are found to have attachment difficulties. Such difficulties can be profound, leading to disruptive behaviour which adoptive parents often find hard to cope with and understand. As Mary Beek contends in this paper, one of the challenges for adoption agencies is to offer such families appropriate support. In examining a project carried out by the Norfolk-based Adoption and Family Finding Units post-adoption service, she demonstrates how specialised help involving parents and post-adoption social workers can dramatically improve the quality of care for adopted children — and indeed the quality of life for all the family. She also underlines the value of attachment theory as a tool for helping adoptive parents understand their childrens behaviour.

Providing a Secure Base: Tuning in to Children with Severe Learning Difficulties in Long-Term Foster Care*:

Mary Beek and Gillian Schofield analyse the care given to four children with severe learning difficulties who have made excellent progress in long-term foster care. Their foster carers were found to be providing sensitive care across five dimensions of parenting: providing availability, tuning in to the minds and feelings of the children, building self-esteem, promoting autonomy and including the child as a full member of the family. The capacity to tune in to the minds of the children, to see the world from their perspective, was seen as key to the building of warm, positive relationships. Secure in these relationships, the childrens anxiety levels were reduced and they were freer to learn, play and develop their potential.