The effects of foster placement on the biological children of foster parents : an exploratory investigation

This study Investigated the initial effects on biological children of a foster child's placement in the family, in the general context of the foster families' adjustment to care. Six new foster families, recommended by the Tennessee Department of Human Services, participated in the project for a period of five to six months. Families were interviewed before placement and four months after placement to collect general information and to compare the families' expectations for fostering with their actual experiences. Foster parents were also interviewed weekly by phone to collect behavioral data on each child.

Analysis of behavior data suggests that although biological children exerted constant effort to accommodate the foster child and to help their parents at home throughout the study, mothers reported feeling more dissatisfied with their children's behavior four months after placement than they had before placement. However, changes in the number of positive and negative behaviors reported by mothers were not significant.

Mothers also reported having less contact and feeling less intimate with their own children four months after placement. Mothers and their children evaluated the reduction in contact and intimacy negatively when situational stress was high.

Although interview data suggested that family members decided to foster to balance their own personal needs, the findings of this study suggested that initially, fostering actually disrupted family functioning, When a caseworker was able to help a family cope with situational stress, the family reported a positive foster care experience and began to integrate the foster child into their home. If the stress level became too high, however, families reported feeling "burned-out," family functioning was disrupted and the placement was threatened. Biological children in this study influenced their parents' decisions whether to continue to foster.

The investigator proposes a three-stage descriptive model of initial family adjustment to care: (1) an idealization stage, (2) an adjustment stage, (3) an integration stage. Specific changes experienced by the biological children and their parents are described for each stage and their implications for preparing and working with new families discussed.