engleski

Foster care from child perspective

The outline of this presentation is defined by linking two phenomena- child perspective and experience, and the foster care of children. The general goal is defined as getting to know and understand foster care from the child's perspective, or more precisely perspective of foster children, biological children of foster parents, as well as the adults who were in a foster care earlier in their life. Five specific goals are set: -Getting to know experiences and understanding the reasons for displacement from biological family and being accommodated in the foster family from child point of view ; -Getting to know experiences and understanding the foster child/young person status ; -Getting to know experiences and understanding the foster child status of the children and young people who have been placed in the institution after the placement in foster family had been evaluated as inadequate ; -Getting to know experiences and understanding the reasons for foster child care from the perspective of foster parents' biological child ; -Getting to know experiences and understanding the reasons for foster child care from the perspective of adults who were in the foster child care. Key participants of research are children and adolescents- foster children and biological children of foster parents aged 10 to 12 and 15 to 17, as well as adults who were in the foster care as children. It is a heterogeneous group of participants, who posses a lot of knowledge about the research problem and they can be evaluated as a relevant sample. Research is carried out on the principles of qualitative approach and participatory research. Key method used to explore the user perspective is semi-structured interview. Data will be analyzed using NVivo8. The purpose of research is directly related to development of new knowledge which will enable raising the level of quality of foster care, through providing conditions needed to raise the quality of foster child care in Croatia, on the bases of appropriate informing, preparation, and participation of all parties, including children too (both foster children and biological children of foster parents), during the process of separation of a child from its own family, the placement into a foster family and adjusting foster care to the needs and rights of a child. Data gathering is still in process, but the first impressions form the filed of research talk about readiness of children to participate and to share their experiences.

foster care; child perspective; Croatian experiences

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