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Does short-term trans-racial fostering effect long-term culturally appropriate placements?
According to the Fostering and Adoption Research in Practice, matching a child with a foster carer is considered one of the turning points in that child’s life. The impact on the child can have a long term effect, so getting it right early on is crucial.
With research pointing to trans-racial placements affecting a child’s identity, authorities often spend longer looking for the perfect match. This delay in placement is not considered ideal, so as a short-term solution children are often placed trans-racially.
However, some contrasting studies suggest trans-racial placements do not affect the child’s behaviour, stability or give rise to psychological issues. Although it can create different challenges such as dealing with the external misconceptions and comments, there has also been a lot of success especially in areas where ethnic diversity is common.
Bearing both these points in mind, it is often necessary to implement short-term trans-racial fostering. However, this practice elevates another issue; by following this strategy, does it make it more difficult to make culturally appropriate placements when needed?
Nurture versus nature
Carol Smith discusses how the emphasis on long term placements is based on each child’s individuality. The fact that the child is born to other parents has a large part to play in this. Therefore whatever long term placement the child has, it is impossible for him or her to be moulded into the new family completely.
Her research suggests that past matching exercises were carried to extreme lengths that play no part in predicting the child’s future development in terms of personality. Whatever the child’s perceived background, the outcome can never be entirely predicted.
Do the numbers match?
An article in the Guardian suggests that there are a similar of amount of people offering long term adoptive homes as there are children awaiting. The conclusion made from this is that some children are less desirable than others and are ‘hard to place’, rather than a shortage of possible parents.
The fostering challenges are different, as in this situation the amount of available foster carers falls very short of the children looking for placements. However, work is still going on to quell the myths that surround fostering, in order to encourage more carers to come forward.
Finding an identity
From the child’s perspective, the main question under discussion is whether a short-term trans-racial placement confuses the child’s ability to form a sense of their racial identity, as discussed in a literature review by Rodrigo. Whether this has a negative effect when the child is placed into a more culturally appropriate environment has not yet been studied.
In summary
Although the trans-racial fostering debate rages on, the evidence that suggests a short-term placement of this nature affects the ability to make perceived appropriate cultural placements when needed is lacking.
However, it is fair to suggest that such placements are made to cut down the time a child waits for a foster home. Therefore, it is possible that suitable placements may be compromised, as a perfect linking may not be available at any given time.
References
http://fosteringandadoption.rip.org.uk/topics/matching/
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-17479-9_6
http://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2015/mar/03/fostering-adoption-hard-to-place-children
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