An Ecological Systems Approach to Supporting Foster Parents and Families

Foster parents serve a critical role in the child welfare system, caring for the more than 400,000 children in foster care placements nationally (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2014). Foster parents’ ability to provide for our nation’s most vulnerable children depends on their interactions with multiple systems and levels of support.  Support can be reciprocal, based on support received from others as well as the value placed in providing social support to others. Positive relationships between foster parents and service providers  contribute to foster parent satisfaction (Geiger, Hayes, & Lietz, 2013) and placement success (Farmer, Lipscombe, & Meyers, 2005); however, few studies have investigated the interactions of varying levels of social support and how that impacts resilience in foster families. This paper sought to examine how understanding social support from an ecological perspective may prove useful in understanding foster family resilience.

Twenty foster families in a southwestern state were invited to participate in two in-depth narrative interviews, seeking to understand what factors contributed to their longevity and resilience in fostering. Families were purposively selected based on length of fostering (>5 years) and rating of at least 3.0 on the Family Assessment Device (FAD; Epstein, Baldwin, & Bishop, 1983). Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using Nvivo10. Four researchers independently coded the qualitative interviews, using thematic analysis to identify factors contributing to the resilience of foster families in the study. Social support was a prominent theme in the study, with 45% of the interviews referencing social support in some way.  Further analysis was conducted to sub-code the theme of social support, further delineating aspects of this theme. Researchers utilized an audit trail, reflexivity, peer debriefing, triangulation by observer, and member check as strategies to increase trustworthiness of the findings.

 Social support was described by foster families as critical to their ability to continue fostering.  Foster parents in this study identified both emotional and tangible supports that contributed to their ability to continue providing care to foster children over the years, and allowed their family to manage stressful or challenging tasks.  Foster families went beyond identifying naturally occurring and professional social support, to discuss the importance of boundary settings, communication, and understanding that was necessary from both.  Examples were provided of the interaction between micro, mezzo, and macro levels of support, and how their support network has changed over time to accommodate the changing needs of their families.

 Findings from this study highlight the importance of an ecological approach to providing support to foster families and offers multiple levels of intervention.  Foster parents in this study described strengthening and modifying relationships as the needs of their families changed over time.  They describe compensating for less support in one area with more support in another area. Recognizing that social support is a continuous, bidirectional network that develops and changes over time, allows practitioners to more accurately assess and provide support to foster families, which ultimately impacts the children they serve.