Browsing by Author "Frost, Nina"

In this study experiences concerning cooperation between foster care and school was examined. The goal was to search and describe different forms and problems in cooperation from the point of view of the foster care personnel. The cooperation was expected to be difficult and to seldom take place. Having worked in a child welfare facility. My experiences made me think about these problems. The subject is interesting and has apparently not been researched that much. Based on the theory it was possible to bring the Finnish legislatives point of view to the cooperation and also the student’s right to be supported in education. The material constructed of four foster care home representatives’ interviews. I ended up using a semi-structured interview as research method so that the interviewees had the opportunity to answer my questions as freely as possible. In material analysis I used theming. After theming I simplified the material and interpreted it using the original phrases. Certain themes, which were the same as the research question popped up from the material. The main themes were describing the forms of cooperation, who were doing it, the targets and methods of cooperation and the challenges and remedies of cooperation. The challenges in cooperation were described as not seeing the child’s needs, not listening to the counterpart, school being too inquisitive about the child’s current situation at home or disclosing the parents from the child’s life. Another problem was the counterpart trying to give guidelines on how to operate with the child. The goals were the child’s advantage, building trust, solution-centered actions, communication and correctly prioritized goals. The method of successful cooperation was knowing who you are working with since the more they kept in touch, the easier the cooperation was. Cooperation between school and foster care homes is quite similar to cooperation between home and school. The cooperation between foster care home and school may be not be as dense, which I think is because of the child’s special needs concerning school. This cooperation however does not differ from cooperation between school and home if the child has special needs and the parents have the desire to cooperate with school. The goal of cooperation is to build trust. The problem in cooperation is the lack of reality when setting goals to a child. Right situation assessment when determining the child’s ability to go to school was seen as an important factor. Cooperation has also been done by solution-centered thinking, highlighting the right situation assessment.