Understanding and Working with Parents of Children in Long-Term Foster Care

Gillian Schofield is Professor of Child and Family Social Work and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on the Child and Family at the University of East Anglia, UK. She is an experienced social worker, has led a series of funded research projects on long-term foster care and is the author of a wide range of books and articles. Emma Ward is a Senior Research Associate in the Centre for Research on the Child and Family at the University of East Anglia. She has worked on a number of research projects on foster care.

• 1. Introduction: legal, policy and research context. 2. Parenting before the children went into care. 3. Parents' experience of their children going into care. 4. Parents' experience of their children growing up in foster care. 5. Contact between parents and their children. 6. Parents' relationships with foster carers. 7. Parents' relationships with social workers. 8. Am I still a parent? Managing a threatened identity. 9. Social workers' perspectives on their work with parents. 10. Conclusion: developing social work practice. References. Index.

Gillian Schofield and Emma Ward have drawn strongly on the very personal and often moving experiences of parents whose children have been taken into long-term foster care to produce this well written and insightful book. Quotations from parents poignantly demonstrate the challenges that they have faced. These capture their own understanding and sense of what has happened and the resulting impact on their lives, their children's lives and their relationships with their children and the professionals working with them... There are useful suggestions for ways of improving relationships between both social workers and parents and foster carers and parents respectively. Well written and concise, each chapter ends with a conclusion and a section on "key messages and implications for practice", which is a useful summary of the content. This book is a valuable resource for expanding awareness of the key issues for parents of children in long-term foster care and the positive contributions parents can make to the welfare of their children. It uses the lessons learnt to offer useful models of good practice. This area is overlooked and under-published.