Barriers and Opportunities for Foster Parenting. Foster Family as a Recipe for Crisis?

For one’s proper maturation, every child needs a family which would provide him or her with care, love, food or shelter and would take care of his or her both emotional and educational development. When family is in crisis originating from different circumstances – not only the lack of functionality but also the illness or death of the parents, their lack of resourcefulness, the fact that they do not fulfill their parental duties in a right way, while the closest relatives are unable to take care of and help a childa very important role is played byintervention as well as institutional support and, above all, the placement of a defenseless child with a right foster family. The purpose of this article is to illustrate how foster families as well as institutions exercising control over the foster care system function after January 01, 2012 whenthe Act on Family Support and Foster Care System was introduced. The Act at hand is aimed at counteracting negative trends of removing children from their dysfunctional families in order to place them within the foster care system. The purpose of the Act is to reduce the number of children placed within the foster care system and to assure that the ones who have already been included into the system would be entrusted to foster families or placed in small environmental care facilities. Social work with dysfunctional family is now to be the basic instrument for acting in favor of a child. However, the introduction of this new Law raised many concerns and criticisms from institutions to which new roles and responsibilities were assigned and aroused the interest of existing foster families. A child leaving his or her home, often all of a sudden, feels very lonely, unwanted, and is forced to look after one’s place in the world, acceptance, and understanding.The work carried out by foster families should then consist in rebuilding the child’s self-esteem and his or her sense of belonging to a particular group and environment. It is a hard and time-consuming task which requires a lot of understanding and acceptance.Therefore, regular cooperation with different institutions which support both biological family – in restoring the appropriate way of fulfilling parental roles,as well as foster family, the aim of which is to assure the replacement of a child with his or her family of origin, is necessary. Promotion and development of the foster family care system have profound social and economic justification. It is one of the most effective and desirable ways of protecting and helping children who do not have “normal” and well-functioning families. The institution of a foster family becomes an asylum in which at child is to recover from ingrown traumaand rebuild his or her self-esteem.kasiablazejewska6@gmail.comUniwersytet Łódzki2416718