Assessment in Kinship Foster Care: A New Tool to Evaluate the Strengths and Weaknesses
Department of Methods of Research and Diagnosis in Education, University of Barcelona, Passeig de la Vall d'Hebron 171, Edifici Llevant, Barcelona 08035, Spain
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Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Nigel Parton
Soc. Sci. 2015, 4(1), 1-17; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci4010001
Received: 22 September 2014
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Accepted: 2 December 2014
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Published: 24 December 2014
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Contemporary Developments in Child Protection)
Placement in kinship family has existed informally throughout time. There are many countries in which kinship family care is the most common measure used for child protection. However, it is a subject of continuous debate. One of the major issues is that kinship foster care is relied upon without carrying out an evaluation study of the family; often the child is placed directly with grandparents and uncles simply because they are direct family. This article presents an assessment tool to evaluate extended families in order to ensure the welfare of the child. The tool was created as a result of the cooperative research of 126 professionals from seven regions of Spain. The tool can identify the strengths and weaknesses of families by considering six factors: personal characteristics, the coverage of basic needs, collaboration with professionals, the family structure and dynamics, the relationship between family, child, and biological family, and, finally, the attitude towards the placement. The assessment tool is innovative and introduces the opportunity to consider the skills of the kinship foster care family, the needs of support, and which families are unfit to take care of the child. To conclude, the tool tries to overcome one of the principal disadvantages of kinship foster care: the lack of knowledge about the kinship family.
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Keywords:
kinship foster care; assessment tool; action research
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Fuentes-Peláez, N.; Amorós, P.; Pastor, C.; Molina, M.C.; Mateo, M. Assessment in Kinship Foster Care: A New Tool to Evaluate the Strengths and Weaknesses. Soc. Sci. 2015, 4, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci4010001
AMA Style
Fuentes-Peláez N, Amorós P, Pastor C, Molina MC, Mateo M. Assessment in Kinship Foster Care: A New Tool to Evaluate the Strengths and Weaknesses. Social Sciences. 2015; 4(1):1-17. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci4010001
Chicago/Turabian StyleFuentes-Peláez, Nuria, Pere Amorós, Crescencia Pastor, María C. Molina, and Maribel Mateo. 2015. "Assessment in Kinship Foster Care: A New Tool to Evaluate the Strengths and Weaknesses" Social Sciences 4, no. 1: 1-17. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci4010001
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