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Being a parent, but not: A grounded theory of home-based care

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posted on 2024-07-24, 03:47 authored by Kimberlea CooperKimberlea Cooper, C Sadowski, R Townsend
Objective: This constructivist-grounded-theory study explored how foster and kinship carers conceptualize and experience their role. Background: Internationally, amid growing emphasis on home-based care for children and young people living outside parental care, issues such as carer shortages, dissatisfied carers, and placement instability present significant challenges. Method: Sixteen carers (seven foster carers and nine kinship carers) from a regional area in Victoria, Australia, participated in in-depth interviews following constructivist-grounded-theory protocols. Results: Six categories reveal the central ways carers go about caring for children and young people and the main challenges they face in doing so. The core category of “being a parent, but not” demonstrates tensions that carers experience in trying to establish a sense of belonging and connectedness with a child, within the limits of the Victorian home-based care system. Conclusion: Home-based carers view their role through a parental lens, but with various limitations that restrict their sense of being a parent. Implications: The current research acknowledges the role tensions inherent within the Victorian home-based care system and emphasizes the importance of raising the status of foster and kinship carers to provide more recognition of the expertise they hold in the care of children and young people within this complex context.

History

Publication Date

2024-07-01

Journal

Family Relations

Volume

73

Issue

3

Pagination

19p. (p. 1880-1898)

Publisher

Wiley

ISSN

0197-6664

Rights Statement

© 2023 The Authors. Family Relations published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of National Council on Family Relations. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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