Special foster care: A history and rationale

Abstract

Special Foster Care (SFC) is a growing treatment resource for intensely disturbed and handicapped children. It has developed most fully with the deinstitutionalization movement of the past two decades in response to demands for more family‐oriented, community‐based programs for the care of exceptional children. SFC may be conceptualized as a new stage in the evolution of foster family care representing a synthesis of the traditional foster home andcertain elements of the modern treatment‐centered institution. The following article reviews the various conceptual and practical developments which have combined to create the need for and further the evolution of special foster care. The first section examines the trends which produced the movement for deinstitutionalization and discusses the arguments supporting the community and family‐oriented aspects of the SFC model. The historical antecedents to special foster care then are summarized to illustrate the divergent evolution of foster home and children's institution. The purpose of this section is to show that the development of foster family care as the preferred placement for “normal”; children and the specialization of the institution as a therapeutic setting for maladjusted children left neither alternative fully prepared to meet the needs of special children in normal society. The final portion traces the practical development of special foster care as an adaptation of the traditional foster home model to the treatment needs of exceptional children. Specific programs are summarized beginning with the earliest SFC efforts in the 1950s, including those initiated by institutions as transitional aftercare services for children returning to community life. Various common elements are identified which have appeared consistently in unrelated SFC programs and which therefore may be considered as basic service components. A composite SFC model is presented in conclusion, representing a distillation of those features which continue to survive and shape the evolution of special foster care as it enters the 1980s.

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