Foster carers' perceptions of the long-term effectiveness of the Fostering Changes programme

Abstract

The present article reports foster carer perceptions of the long-term effectiveness of a carer-focussed training intervention – the Fostering Changes (FC) programme. Five foster carers who completed FC at a not-for-profit child and family agency in New Zealand were interviewed 13–15 months post-training about their experiences and perceptions of FC and its subsequent effectiveness. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) informed both data collection and analysis. Five superordinate themes were identified: (1) FC is perceived to be an effective training programme that provides sustained benefits; (2) foster carer training is crucially important; (3) the challenges of fostering continue, irrespective of training; (4) caregiver confidence gained from training wanes over time in the face of persistent challenges; (5) foster carers require ongoing therapeutic interventions and support because of their children's persistent behavioural and relational difficulties. The findings suggest that, while FC provides effective and relevant training, carers simultaneously require ongoing clinical services. Practitioner points Children in out-of-home care who have persistent relational and mental health difficulties require ongoing specialised therapeutic support Foster carer group training (such as Fostering Changes) may help to stabilise children's placements and mental health recovery but does not replace the need for personalised, systemic interventions with caregivers Foster carer group therapeutic training is preferably integrated within ongoing, systemic, multi-component interventions, rather than offered as discrete, stand-alone interventions.