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Promoting permanency for foster children is an essential goal of the child welfare system. To achieve this goal, permanency planning is designed as a process to make legal long-term and family-like arrangements. However, in Taiwan, permanency planning has not been widely recognized. Also, children who struggle with drift in care are unlikely to achieve permanency and thus often without adequate relational supports while in or leaving care. It is important to enhance permanency efforts by focusing on another dimension—relational permanency, which involves concepts of family continuity, stable connections, and enduring relationships. Thus, this study aims to explore the concept of relational permanency and strategies from the perspectives of child welfare practitioners and former foster youth.
Methods
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two groups of participants in Taiwan: 14 former foster youth and 36 child welfare practitioners, including professionals in child protection, residential care, and independent living programs. Former foster youth were asked to identify significant relationships in foster care, characteristics of these significant and supportive adults, and how meaningful these relationships in their life. Child welfare practitioners were asked about their perception of foster youth’s relationships with family, peers, and practitioners and to identify strategies helping youth make sense of relations. Repeated comparisons of data from the two groups were conducted for thematic analyses.
Results
Relational needs are certain. The concept of “permanency” has not been widely known in the field in Taiwan. But practitioners recognize foster children’s needs for positive attachment and connection. Foster youths also identify relational needs, but their lived experiences in care often lack enduring caring relationships due to drift in care, no engagement throughout the process, and no autonomy in residential settings. Strategies for achieving relational permanency. Practitioners help foster youth with building trust and positive relationships by developing interpersonal skills and understanding that relationships may end someday but still have the power of stability, support, and belonging. Foster youths appreciate personalized accompany that stabilizes their daily life and emotions and helps with identity development. Circle of relational permanency. Practitioners may not be able to play a permanent role in a foster youth’s life, but they tend to be a family member whenever needed and help youth explore positive relationships in the community. Foster youths realize that having a positive role model during their time in care meet their relational needs, and thus the sense of “being needed” and “giving back” leads them to become a role model for another child in foster care.
Conclusions/Implications
Implications for child welfare practice and policy in Taiwan include: (1) The child welfare system should consider "relational permanency" as a new goal of its service. (2) To achieve this goal, service providers need to develop programs particularly for creating enduring and personalized relationships between children and caregivers, and for maintaining trusting and support roles for foster children to achieve post-permanency stability. (3) All foster children should be given the opportunity to link or identify a significant role who can be either a role model or with enduring relationships.