engleski

Dealing with Life Difficulties of Children and Adults with Foster Care Experience

Developmental path of children separated from their birth family and accommodated in foster care family is characterized with extremely demanding and stressful situations which require abundant repertoire of coping strategies. In order to understand the ways of dealing with certain situation, perspective of person involved is very important. Therefore the main scope of this presentation is to complete existing knowledge of coping mechanisms of children and adults with foster care experience with their perspective. In this regard, data of research named Foster care from child perspective, conducted during 2010. and 2011., by research team of Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, with support of UNICEF Office for Croatia, will be analysed. The general goal of that research was getting to know and understand foster care form users' perspective. The goal of this presentation is more specific: try to understand the ways on which children and adults with experience of foster care in childhood manage to overcome difficult life situations. For this purpose, sample of 40 participants from the following group of “foster care users” was formed: foster children, foster adolescents, children/youth that were placed in an institution after having spent time in a foster home and adults who were in foster care as children. The age of participants varies form 10 to 45 with the similar proportion of male and female participants. Data were collected through semi structured interviews and for analysis qualitative methods will be used. Research results regarding life experience indicate some, although very specific, similar experiences of participants such as: seriously difficult family situation before replacement, inadequate preparedness, uncertainty and lack of information in the face of out-of-home placement. The descriptions of foster care experiences consists of very complex and sometimes contradictory statements that indicate a high diversity of experiences of each group of users and each user individually. Analyzing the ways in which participants were and are coping with these difficulties, the focus will be on their experiences, thoughts, emotional reactions and behavior. Since it is known that the choice of coping strategies, among other things, also depends on the individual's characteristics and context (Lazarus and Folkman, 1991), special attention will be given to different ways participants cope regarding their age, but also strengths and weaknesses they have identified both in themselves and in environment

coping strategies; children; adults; foster care; Croatian experiences

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