Nordic kinship care - Challenges and opportunities for professionals working with kinship and network foster care

Background
Kinship and network foster care has gained international attention in recent decades, both in research and increased usage. Despite the increased focus, previous research indicates that social work practice lacks the necessary knowledge and tools to support kinship and network foster care. Danish research also points to several challenges for social workers in planning, deciding, and implementing high-quality kinship and network foster care placements.

In this study, we investigate social work to identify challenges in social work and explore opportunities to enhance kinship and network foster care. More specifically, we examine practices of professionals involved in kinship and network foster care, identify the challenges and opportunities they encounter before the placement decision, during the matching process, and in the first year following the placement.

Methods
The study is primarily based on qualitative data from interviews with social workers (n=20) and participant observations (11 hours) of social workers supporting kinship care families and working with network foster care across six Danish municipalities. Additionally, it includes interviews with biological parents (n=4), new primary caregivers (n=6), and young adults (n=3) who, as children, were placed. Interviews of social workers, in a few cases, contain references to the same families within the six different municipalities included in the project. The remaining thirteen interviews focus on other children in kinship care across Denmark.

Conclusions and implications
Our preliminary findings indicate that challenges for social workers particularly arise before the placement decision is made, due to insufficient and delayed involvement of the child's network. This influences the likelihood of a kinship and network foster care placement, affects the matching process, and can present challenges during the first year of the placement.

Regarding the municipalities' matching process, social workers experience some uncertainty about the approval of kinship and network foster care families. We identify a strong focus on the mentalization abilities of foster care families, with less attention given to the conditions and context of the role.

Our preliminary findings indicate a lack of coherence and coordination between social workers and other professionals involved in supporting in kinship and network foster care. In many cases, there is an absence of formalized meetings that bring together all relevant stakeholders to discuss the specific kinship care arrangement. Such a lack of systematic collaboration increases the risk of delayed identification and intervention in emerging challenges, thereby undermining the capacity to provide timely and effective support to the child, the biological family, and the kinship or network caregivers. Given the typically higher number of actors involved in kinship care compared to traditional foster care, the need for robust coordination mechanisms becomes even more crucial.

Overall, our preliminary findings indicate that social workers perceive their role in kinship and network foster care to differ from that of working with formal foster care. This difference is evident in their stronger need for coordination between professionals and the network, as well as navigating new family dynamics, which presents both opportunities and challenges for all.