Quality foster care: who decides?

The selection of foster parents with qualities necessary to undertake care of other people's children is a difficult task. Little research has been done in identifying what the associated qualities are. This paper reports the first stage of a research study examining these qualities from the perspective of foster parents themselves and experienced family care workers. From a qualitative exercise involving 10 foster parents and 2 family care workers over 50 nominated qualities were elicited covering motivation; personal attributes; knowledge and skills with children and competencies emanating from experience. Arising from this exercise a model was constructed which identifies stages in foster parenting. This could enable differential educational strategies based on a competency approach to be developed in order to achieve a better level of quality control.