Fostering Service In Kent: A Case Study

This essay will focus on the fostering service in Kent. This will be achieved by briefly explaining what fostering entails, the aims, targets and outcomes. The cultural and historical aspects of fostering will be looked into. The essay will also highlight the role the community and the state plays in the wellbeing of fostered children who are defined as “looked after children” by the state. This essay will also briefly explore fostering African culture. The British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) states that fostering is looking after and living with children who cannot live with their own parents or guardians. There are about 48,000 children living in foster placements in England. The local authority has legal parental responsibility
This can create low self-esteem and lack of sense of belonging on the fostered children which might cause difficulties in the placement that might lead to the placement breaking down (Adoption and Fostering, 2008 pp, 5-18). In some cases the local authority and birth parents share the parental responsibilities over a child in a foster placement (Children Act 1989, section 31) or by birth parents (Children Act 1989, section 20) despite that it is the foster parents who do the day to day parenting. This can bring conflict to the placement about roles and relationships, especially if it is a long term placement (Schofield et al cited in Adoption and Fostering).The foster carers has to use the placement plan to understand what decisions can be made by foster
Their dedication and commitment should be saluted ( House of Commons Health Committee, 1998 cited in Adoption and Fostering). There a lot of reasons why UK is sort of foster carers, most foster carers are underpaid, most local authorities pay below the recommended National Foster Care Association minimum rate. Fostering recruitment can also be quite intrusive which other people find quite uncomfortable ( IanSinclair, 2005). The policy exchange highlights issues that affect the fostering system in the UK. Foster carers are sometimes made to take on children with extremely challenging behaviour without full knowledge of the behaviours, two thirds of fostering services are made to accommodate children that do not meet their criteria, this is due to shortages of foster homes, this can have major negative effect on the carer as well as the young child in the placement, Due to shortage of foster carers there is no matching system, some children are being placed with parents that don’t match their criteria, for example black ethnic children are place out of their borough with an Asian family, in this case the child has lost part of her cultural identity, Different religion, beliefs and food, even if the family improvised by cooking the type of food the young child eats, there is still an element of exclusion as the child will feel as if she is treated differently. Another issue raised