Grief and Loss in Foster Care Report Published
The newly published ‘Grief and Loss: Understanding the impacts of placement transitions on MacKillop foster carers and their children’ by Dr Margaret Kertesz, Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Social Work, is now publicly available.
Commissioned by MacKillop Family Services, it outlines 15 recommendations for foster care agencies to consider when supporting foster care families and professionals to prepare for placement transitions and to manage this difficult experience.
Caring for children while they cannot live at home with their parents is a hugely rewarding but challenging task. At a time when the numbers of families offering to foster is dwindling, some carers find the placement transitions so unexpectedly painful that they do not continue fostering.
This new report brings to life the experiences of foster care families when foster children leave their care and it provides insights into how the out-of-home sector can develop its support for carers and their families in preparation for, and following the end of, a placement.
Carers called for acknowledgement of the deep feelings they develop for the children they look after and support for the loss and grief that is almost always a part of the process. The best support occurs in the context of real and authentic relationships between carer families and out-of-home care professionals and involved honest and open communication. Professionals themselves also require training and support for their demanding roles.
To complement and unpack this important research report, MacKillop has created a 5-episode podcast ‘Preparing Our Hearts: A Foster Care Journey’ to further examine the experiences, challenges, coping strategies and support around saying goodbye to a foster child. This is a wonderful training and support resource deriving from the research.
A peer-reviewed journal article on the same topic can be found at https://doi.org/10.1080/0312407X.2024.2378751
