The role of foster carers and children's outcomes in England and Portugal
Keywords: foster care
children in foster care
foster carers
selection process of foster carers

Background: Foster carers provide a family environment for children and promote their development and permanence. Moreover, they are expected to collaborate with children’s services, social workers in the fostering services, and children’s birth families. This evidence has been widely researched, though there is no agreement on a theoretical framework that summarises the role of the foster carers. This thesis speaks to this gap in the literature by exploring in depth the role of foster carers in the context of England and Portugal.
Methods: This thesis uses mixed methods and follows a sequential exploratory design, since qualitative evidence from the first research phase informs the second quantitative research phase.
Methodology for Phase One: Nineteen focus groups were conducted with a total of 99 participants between England and Portugal. Children who were in foster care, young adults who had been in foster care, foster carers who had at least one child in placement, and social workers who were working with foster carers shared their perspectives on what makes a good foster carer and how placement success could be measured. The data were analysed following an adapted grounded theory structure.
Findings of Phase One: Stakeholders considered that the role of foster carers, which was focused on the practice of fostering children, combined different elements, namely foster carers’ personal characteristics (and past experiences); children’s permanence, personal characteristics and development; foster carers’ personal sources of support and stress (family life and social network); and contextual sources of support and stress (birth families of children, children’s services, and social workers in the fostering services). This evidence led to the development of the process model of the determinants of fostering, and to the understanding that there were challenges around promoting children’s sense of belonging to the foster family in the English foster care system and to the children’s birth family in the Portuguese foster care system. In this research phase, foster carers’ fostering competencies, quality of the relationship between foster carers and children, and children’s emotional, social, and behavioural difficulties, were selected as the main variables to be analysed in the second research phase.
Methodology for Phase Two: A total of 740 foster carers in England and 53 foster carers in Portugal, who were at that time fostering a child who had been placed with them for at least one year, and who was at least 2 years old at the start of the placement and between 4 and 17 years old at the time the questionnaires were completed, participated in this phase. Multiple regression analysis and structural equation modelling were used to explore the associations between foster carers’ self-reported fostering competencies, quality of their relationship with children, and children’s difficulties.
Findings of Phase Two: In the Portuguese sample, greater closeness was associated with fewer children’s peer problems. In the English sample, greater additional tasks’ competency and lower control levels of foster carers were related to fewer difficulties of children. It was also found that the closeness between foster carers and children mediated the relationship between additional tasks’ competency of foster carers and children’s peer problems, children’s hyperactivity levels, and children’s conduct problems, even if the latter only partially. Lastly, greater closeness between foster carers and children was associated with fewer children’s emotional problems, peer problems, conduct problems, as well as lower hyperactivity levels.
Conclusions: This thesis proposes a theoretical framework adapted from the model proposed by Belsky (1984), that is the process model of the determinants of fostering, to understand the role of foster carers and presents evidence that the quality of the relationship between foster carers and children is crucial to achieving positive outcomes. Moreover, the role of foster carers can be described as similar to the role of a parent, but with some additional tasks. The contribution to knowledge includes research, policy, and practice.