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BJSW Advance Access originally published online on August 15, 2005
British Journal of Social Work 2007 37(4):619-642; doi:10.1093/bjsw/bch275
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved.

The Search For Stability and Permanence: Modelling the Pathways of Long-stay Looked After Children

Gillian Schofield, June Thoburn, Darren Howell and Jonathan Dickens

The authors are members of the Centre for Research on the Child and Family, based in the School of Social Work and Psychosocial Sciences at the University of East Anglia.

Dr Gillian Schofield is a Senior Lecturer in Psychosocial Sciences and Co-Director of the Centre. Her research interests are in attachment, resilience and family placement.

Dr June Thoburn is Professor of Social Work and former Director of the Centre. Her research interests are in family placement and the family support and child protection provisions of the 1989 Children Act.

Darren Howell was the Senior Research Associate for the study reported in this paper.

Jonathan Dickens is a Lecturer in Social Work. His research interests include child care law and the development of social work in its wider social policy and international contexts.

Correspondence to Dr G. Schofield, Centre for Research on the Child and Family, Elizabeth Fry Building, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK. E-mail: g.schofield{at}uea.ac.uk

This paper presents findings from a study of children looked after by 24 local authorities. It combines analysis of statistical data with analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from a questionnaire survey of a targeted sub-sample of children who had been looked after for 4 years or more. The paper highlights a complex picture of continuity and discontinuity in attempts to achieve stability and permanence in a range of birth family, foster care, adoption, residential and leaving care placements for long-stay children. Some long-stay children are moving smoothly and in a planned way towards a family for life, while some experience long periods in stable but temporary placements or have a number of moves prior to finding stability and a sense of belonging. A further group of children experience stability or moves while looked after, without having a family to belong to when they move into adult life. The paper discusses the difficulty with the Government’s current long-stay performance measure in capturing the difference between stability in placement and planned permanence for children and families.

Keywords: looked after children, stability, permanence, performance


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