Making visits better: The perspectives of parents, foster parents, and child welfare workers

Abstract

Mothers of children recently placed in foster care, foster mothers, and child welfare workers participated in semistructured, clinical interviews focusing on the challenges of parent visitation with young children. Mothers described their feelings of grief, trauma, and rage about the forced separation from their children and stressed the importance of emotional expression and communication during visits. Child welfare workers described the complexities of supporting emotionally close parent-child interactions while monitoring and assessing parental behavior during visits. Foster mothers described the importance of preparing children for visits and the difficulties of supporting the children afterward. Implications of understanding mothers', foster mothers', and child welfare workers' perspectives on enhancing the quality of visits with young children are discussed.