The Permanency Plan Game Show: An Intersubjective Case Study of a Foster Care Child and Her Caregivers

Abstract

The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) supports permanency decisions that do not reflect the reality of relationships that exist along a spectrum for children in foster care, biological caregivers, and foster parents. A case example, conceptualized through an intersubjective lens, demonstrates the ways in which the permanency planning process may affect clinical social workers’ capacities to maintain an awareness of the third. Therapists may collude with the system's efforts to define relationships in a context of complementarity and become immersed in the game show dynamic that emerges when parents and children await the court's decision regarding their relational future.

KEYWORDS:

• ASFA
• clinical practice with foster care children
• intersubjectivity
• practice with biological parents and foster parents
• case study