Foster Children : Where They Go and How They Get On

What happens to looked-after children in the longer term? This book analyses the outcomes of a large-scale study of foster children in the UK. It includes individual case studies and draws extensively on the views of foster children themselves. The authors examine:

Why children remain fostered or move to different settings (adoption, residential care, their own families or independent living)

How the children fare in these different settings and why

What the children feel about what happens to them.

Other important issues covered include the support given to birth families to enable children to return home, the experience of adopters, the ways in which foster care can become more permanent and the experiences of young people in independent living.

In bringing together these results the book provides a wealth of findings, many of them new and challenging. It offers positive and practical recommendations and will be an enduring resource for practitioners, academics, policy makers, trainers, managers and all those concerned with the well-being of looked-after children.

Ian Gibbs is a research consultant at the SWRDU at the University of York. His main area of research is looked after children, particularly those in residential care and foster care.

Kate Wilson is Professor of Social Work at the Centre for Social Work, University of Nottingham. She has researched and published widely in the fields of therapeutic work and child welfare, including books on social work with couples, social work in a legal context, non-directive play therapy, and adoption and fostering.

Claire Baker worked at the Social Work Research and Development Unit at the University of York, in the fields of children in and leaving care (particularly disabled children), children in foster care, and stability and permanence issues for looked after children. She now works at the National Leaving Care Advisory Service.