Reasons used by Flemish foster care workers in family reunification decision making

Johan Vanderfaeillie, Dorien Borms, M.S.L. Teunissen, Laura Gypen and Frank Van Holen

Children and Youth Services Review, 2023, vol. 144, issue C

Abstract: Decisions of child welfare workers regarding permanency planning, including a reunification with the birth parents, have a strong impact on the children and the parents. Although a safe reunification of children placed in out-of-home care is considered an important task of child welfare systems, limited research exists regarding reunification. The current study aims to uncover criteria used by Flemish foster workers to substantiate a reunification decision, how important these criteria are vis-à-vis each other and how difficult it is to assess these criteria. The criteria for reunification used by foster care workers were examined using concept mapping. Concept mapping resulted in 53 criteria clustered in six clusters ranked in descending importance: (1) Parents offer safety and focus on the child, (2) Conditions for parents, (3) Interest of the child, (4) Reunification is supported, (5) Conditions for the child and (6) Parents are willing to collaborate during and after reunification. The more important criteria are, the more difficult they are considered to assess. This research shows that the most important criteria are changes regarding safety and being able to focus on the interest of the child. Foster care workers consider most criteria easy to assess.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740922003772
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:144:y:2023:i:c:s0190740922003772

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2022.106741

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().