Arbetsallians, stöd och dess meningsfullhet inom familjehemsvård : En kvalitativ intervjustudie om familjehemsföräldrars beskrivning av stödets betydelse under placeringstid

Sammanfattning: As a foster parent, within the Swedish foster care system, you are granted support and have access to interventions such as educational programs and counselling. Considering this, past research still suggests that a substantial number of foster carers express how these types of interventions can lack a sense of meaningfulness and/or be inadequate. With our research we’ve ventured to better understand exactly how foster parents describe their experiences of support as well as in what manner it affects them, their foster children and the family unit. To obtain such knowledge we’ve conducted six semi-structured interviews with foster parents in Sweden and analyzed our results through a theory discussing the importance of working alliances. Our study also aimed to investigate if and how supportive interventions differentiate when the foster parents’ primary contact is with a private organization or with social services. Consistently across our empirical findings the interviewees talk of continuous contact and interventions adapted according to their individual needs as significant. However, educational opportunities and/or formal counselling sessions are almost never emphasized by foster parents in this study. Our results also show that there is a discrepancy when looking at the foster carers descriptions of support, depending on whom their primary contact has been. There seems to be an overall more positive perception of support when foster parents have depictured their relationship with private practices in comparison to those who’ve answered based on their relationship with social services.