Discussion and Implications for Practice
The purpose of this study is to understand whether state-sanctioned caretaker relationships endure among adolescents who exit foster care through adoption, subsidized guardianship, or long-term relative foster care. From the perspectives of young adults who experience these diverse foster care exits, it explored the complexity involved in the translation of legal permanence to relational permanence, with the aim of producing a theoretically grounded classification of relational permanence as a means to inform child welfare practice and policy related to permanence.
The author notes that the study’s small non-random sample may not be representative of the larger population of older youth who exit foster …show more content…
Their stories exemplify the complexity and nuance involved in the translation of legal permanence to relational permanence. The four emergent conceptual relational permanence categories (i.e., enduring, ambivalent, spurned, and severed) are useful ways of understanding the translation of legal permanence to relational permanence for older youth. These particular categories provide a framework for child welfare practitioners to assess relational permanence before and after legal permanence. Furthermore, these four categories with their suggesting that legal permanence has unintended consequences as a sole policy and practice focus, and aligns with existing research that calls for child welfare agencies to increase their focus on relational permanence (Bellamy, 2008; Cushing et al., …show more content…
As with previous research, this study finds that the various components of relational permanence are not mutually exclusive. Young adults reported a combination of relational factors in their relationships with their caretakers. The diversity of young adults’ experiences and the patterns of these experiences demonstrate that these five relational factors work in tandem to create the quality of relational experience (such as enduring or ambivalent). In this study, legal permanence leads to enduring relational permanence only when all five or four of the five relational factors are
The purpose of this study is to understand whether state-sanctioned caretaker relationships endure among adolescents who exit foster care through adoption, subsidized guardianship, or long-term relative foster care. From the perspectives of young adults who experience these diverse foster care exits, it explored the complexity involved in the translation of legal permanence to relational permanence, with the aim of producing a theoretically grounded classification of relational permanence as a means to inform child welfare practice and policy related to permanence.
The author notes that the study’s small non-random sample may not be representative of the larger population of older youth who exit foster …show more content…
Their stories exemplify the complexity and nuance involved in the translation of legal permanence to relational permanence. The four emergent conceptual relational permanence categories (i.e., enduring, ambivalent, spurned, and severed) are useful ways of understanding the translation of legal permanence to relational permanence for older youth. These particular categories provide a framework for child welfare practitioners to assess relational permanence before and after legal permanence. Furthermore, these four categories with their suggesting that legal permanence has unintended consequences as a sole policy and practice focus, and aligns with existing research that calls for child welfare agencies to increase their focus on relational permanence (Bellamy, 2008; Cushing et al., …show more content…
As with previous research, this study finds that the various components of relational permanence are not mutually exclusive. Young adults reported a combination of relational factors in their relationships with their caretakers. The diversity of young adults’ experiences and the patterns of these experiences demonstrate that these five relational factors work in tandem to create the quality of relational experience (such as enduring or ambivalent). In this study, legal permanence leads to enduring relational permanence only when all five or four of the five relational factors are