The caregiving relationship under stress: foster carers’ experience of loss of the sense of self

Abstract

This paper is an account of a piece of research which involved interviewing six foster carers who had ended a placement with a child under the age of five with an early experience of abuse and neglect. The paper describes one of the themes that emerged from the data analysis, the loss of the sense of self in the foster carers, and argues that the experience of attempting to provide care for these children led to internal shifts in the carers that reverberated throughout the network around the child. The paper suggests that knowing about the external reasons for placement breakdown is not enough without taking into account the impact on the internal world of the foster carers and the emotional impact of attempting to provide care for a child who has experienced abuse and neglect.

Keywords:

• loss of the sense of self
• emotional impact
• internal world
• foster care
• abuse
• neglect
• reflective practice

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Debbie Hindle and Jenny Kenrick for their invaluable supervision of the clinical and research elements of the doctoral research which is the basis of this paper.