Kinship care: Child safety or easy option? Staff and carers’ perspectives

ABSTRACT

Formal kinship care continues to grow in Australia, demanding more research into its characteristics and organizational practice. This research aimed to gain a better understanding of kinship care, its practice issues, and its role in the South Australian alternative care system. Quantitative and qualitative methods, including an online staff survey (n = 81), staff focus groups (n = 56), and interviews and focus groups with Aboriginal (n = 11) and non-Aboriginal (n = 33) kinship carers were used to gain insight into staff and carers’ experiences of kinship care, and of working with each other and the care organization. Descriptive statistics and thematic analyses generated the findings. All participants focused on achieving child safety and the child’s best interests through kinship care. They agreed that kinship care is a valuable, but complex and under-resourced alternative to foster care. They called for more training and support for kinship carers and staff to develop mutual respect and trust to effectively address kinship care’s unique, complex, family, community, and cultural issues. The research concluded that greater resources, organizational support, and sharing and valuing of diverse knowledge and experience are needed to facilitate safe, stable kinship care that is also in the child’s best interests.

KEYWORDS:

• Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal kinship carers’ experiences
• child safety
• child’s best interests
• foster care
• kinship care
• practice perspectives

Funding

Funding was provided by the Department of Families and Communities, South Australian Government.

Notes

1. Please note that results for focus group discussion of Area 4 are presented with those for Area 2 due to overlap between the two.

2. Aboriginal kinship carers requested to be identified as such, therefore results are presented for Aboriginal kinship carers and non-Aboriginal kinship carers. Staff identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander did not wish to be identified separately.

3. Family Scoping is a whole-of-family and community consultation approach that aims to understand diverse family contexts, cultures, needs, relationships, and views about services.

Additional information

Funding

Funding was provided by the Department of Families and Communities, South Australian Government.