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Listen to thisHi,
I am busy conducting a study on this topic and I struggle to get the
latest literature on implications or experiences of caregivers and
foster care parents, in particular those that never attended or had
limited formal education. How do they provide educational support to
children under their care?
I am looking forward to the opinions and views of the discussion group.
Kind regards
Barrington
...
Dear Barrington,
I hope your study goes well.
It seems to me a topic that has, and should, always concerned us
in our work. These days I always feel and think – though I'm not
sure I always did – that the challenge of foster care or the
group care of children is the relationship between child and adult and
that this is a challenge both child and adult face together. Get this
relationship right, the Scottish educationalist A.S. Neill would say,
and education, informal and formal will fall into place.
Great literature is available, including the fictional oeuvre as much as
the non-fictional, to help adults gain some information about this
relationship but I'm at a stage where I believe committed, engaged love
and a capacity to reflect and change are key elements of the adult
part in this relationship. I sense rather than know that feeling is more
significant than any measure of intellect in this. Any evidence I ever
provide always has an anecdotal. bias and some of my academic friends
tell me anecdotal evidence is very weak. So please be careful about the
anecdote I've pasted below from my Leaving Dundee blog but I hope you
agree that to an extent it is coincidentally apposite to your study.
Love and achievement in foster care: a story from the 1930s
Recently on a professional network to which I belong a question was
raised about how well foster carers help the children they look after to
be successful at school. The underlying implication which had initiated
the discussion was that for less well educated foster parents the
educational achievement of the children they foster was not a principal
priority. This being so, it could be concluded, many children in foster
care were being disadvantaged. Discussions like these have a high
profile these days because of the shift in emphasis in government policy
about children since the coalition government came to power in the
United Kingdom. There is much more emphasis on children achieving and
less on thinking about what children need. This may be a valid stance. I
am sure no one – consciously at least – wishes any child to be
disadvantaged or to be left trailing behind life's peloton. I am sure we
all desire that all children get all the learning they need to ensure
they develop the capacity to cope well enough with life's vicissitudes.
I tend to go along with AS Neill's view that if parenting adults get the
emotional support for a child right then the child's full potential will
be freed and educational achievement will naturally follow. This is even
more the case for children who are fostered ; children who first and
foremost require emotional compensation. The current stress on a child
"achieving" may lead to us losing sight of what all children really need
and that is a consistent, nurturing and loving relationship with an
adult. The latter is in my view overwhelmingly the primary function of
foster parents.
Learning from a very wide natural curriculum is clearly necessary for
the healthy development of a child but this current emphasis on
"achievement" tends to insist that children must achieve in education in
those areas which are defined by, and meet the needs of, a minority of
powerful adults whose principal intention is that their political and
economic interests are served. It may or may not be right that these
interests should be served but in the first instance we should insist on
aiming to provide all children with a caring, loving environment which
allows them to be children, where they are given permission to learn and
develop through their own discoveries rather than being enslaved by a
curriculum prescribed by a particular political culture. I think foster
parents should be freed and supported to provide this environment. I
guess I am saying that foster parents should primarily be assessed on
their capacity to be consistent, tenacious, tolerant, flexible, sincere,
concerned and loving.
Just before the beginning of the second world war the father of a
friend of mine saw his father killed by the Gestapo. His mother was
taken away from the family home and he and his elder sister never saw
her again. The tragedy took place in a central European city and the two
siblings were helped to escape from where they lived and were brought to
the United Kingdom. At the age of 6, he, and his sister (who was 2 years
older than him) were fostered by a family who lived in a city situated
in the midlands of England. The foster parents were almost illiterate.
There was no history of educational achievement in the foster home and
as far as my friend's father could recollect there were no books to be
found in the home. The children were sent to a local school and
were soon speaking English. They flourished at this school, as they also
did in the secondary school they later attended. The boy became a
distinguished member of the medical profession, and his sister grew up
to be an accomplished musician who performed in many of the great
concert halls of the world. My friend's father told me that he and his
sister were shocked by the material impoverishment of their foster home.
It was barren of things which would provide intellectual stimulus for
the young siblings. He often wonders why he and his sister flourished
from this unpromising home base and when he does so he comes to the
conclusion that it was because of the emotional warmth and the love that
their foster parents gave his sister and him.
For the sake of maintaining privacy I have altered details of this story
but it remains in essence true. Of course an anecdote does not prove a
theory but I think the story demonstrates that together with the
children's inherent ability, in this instance, the foster parents' love
was enough.
Totnes, 2011
Barrington, it would be great to hear more about your study as it
develops.
Best wishes,
Charles Sharpe
