KINSHIP FOSTER CARE: A STUDY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE CAREGIVERS, THE CHILDREN AND THE CHILD

Traditionally, when parents have been unable to lookafter their children due to death, illness, imprisonment or absence through work, the children’s upbringing has been taken on by their relatives, this being a private, rather than public decision in the majority of cultures. What is a relatively recent development, dating back only around 20 years, is for some of such de facto practices to form part of childcare systems, sanctioned by authorities as a care resource that is an alternative to the biological family, as are residential care and foster care – which were the two basic options for the system until the late 1980s. Its incorporation in the system either results from requests by relatives who take the child into their care and seek legal approval and protection, or follows the detection of a risk situation by social services, who propose members of the extended family as foster carers. Several factors have emerged in parallel with this phenomenon. On the one hand, the decreasing number of foster families (non-relatives) available, especially in countries where this resource was well established. Demographic tendencies indicate changes in employment patterns and in family make-up, which have contributed – as in the case of the USA – to a 30 % decrease in the number of foster families (Hegar & Scannapieco, 1999). On the other hand, the residential care situation; the number of places, rather than increasing, has in fact fallen: large-scale children’s homes, way outside the paradigm of normalization, gradually disappear, and mor