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14 JuLY 2008
NO 1321
The professional worker
Perhaps the most important advantage of children's homes was that the house parents were "professionals" in contrast to foster parents who were seen as direct rivals with natural parents. This was expressed by the attitude "Once foster parents get their hands on children you never get them back," or by the view that if children stayed with foster parents for some time it was inevitable they would form a close relationship which it would be wrong to sever.
There was little acknowledgement that the "professional" houseparent might experience a comparable sense of loss. Consequently, children's homes did not pose the same threat as the comments of the following two parents show. One mother said: "They get looked after, but the people in charge are just doing a job. That's how it should be:" A father commented: "I wouldn't want the children to be looked after by someone else. A home is different, it's their job."
Furthermore, although meetings with houseparents might evoke in parents some sense of failure, this was diffused by the impersonal nature of the institution. Parents discussed their discomfort in terms of embarrassment.
A father: "I'd have been that embarrassed to see the children in a foster home. You'd be seeing someone else doing the job you should be doing. A home now, that's different. They're there to look after the children aren't they? You still know they belong to you."
Sometimes, foster parents were thought to be motivated solely by material gain. This argument was applied particularly to the minority of foster homes which took several foster children.
Another criticism was that foster parents distinguished between their own children and the foster children. Although several residential workers in the study had their own children living in the children's homes this did not seem to present the same problems.
Dissatisfaction with foster homes also sprang from poor physical standards. Care was symbolized by clean clothes and full stomachs. As one mother said: "You never see a dirty bed or a hungry child in home do you?"
Family atmosphere
One of the few advantages attributed to foster homes by parents was that
they provided children with the opportunity to develop within a normal
family atmosphere. But this advantage was not given away free and had to
be paid for by a loss in parental status, as the view of a mother whose
child was in a long term foster home shows: "You don't have a free hand
with foster homes, but it's better for him, he's getting a normal life
and has a home like other boys. They don't get the same attention in a
home."
Weighing up the lack of individual attention in children's homes against the possessiveness of foster parents, a least six parents thought that the ideal compromise would be a small family group home where the children could be looked after individually by residential workers who would not present a threat to either children or parents. One father described his ideal:
A children's home run on family lines is very good I think. Foster parents get too attached, they want the child to be part of their family. Of course if the likes of myself were visiting frequently they wouldn't get the chance to get attached. Now the home where the children are, they're treated like individuals, they all get birthday cards and the like. You can visit a children's home when you like, but with a foster parent's you have to fit in with their routines.
JANE ALDGATE
Aldgate, Jane. (1987). Residential care: A reevaluation of a threatened resource. Child and Youth Care Quarterly, 16, 1. pp. 54-55.
