Browsing by Author "Björkbacka, Emma"

The purpose of this study is to explore how the educational arrangements of foster children are executed according to different professionals working in the school context. The aim was also to discover whether there are differences in the views of different professionals. The foster children may regard additional support in learning, well-being and participation in education. Multiprofessional collaboration that is well executed is one way of supporting the special needs. (Saariluoma, Eriksson & Korhonen 2021; Olsson ym., 2023.) To implement multiprofessional collaboration, a shared interpretation of the situation is needed (Isoherranen, 2012). Research material consisted of data drawn from surveys of three different groups of professionals working with foster children in education: the school administration and management, teaching and educational work and student welfare (N = 40). The professionals assessed how the educational arrangements of foster children are executed. The survey was conducted by VIP-verkosto in spring 2022. VIP-verkosto is a network of professionals aiming to better support students with additional needs that has a subsection representing children placed in care. The analyse was conducted using quantitative methods. The results show that according to professionals working with children placed in care, the educational arrangements were executed with varying degrees of success. The three groups of professionals seemed to share a view of how the educational arrangements are implemented and the differences were more visible inside the groups rather than between them. However, small differences can be distinguished. There was more variation in responses of student welfare professionals and in this group they were more likely to report that the educational ar-rangements are not well executed. The group of school administration and management had the most positive view of how the educational arrangements are implemented whereas the responses of teaching and educational work professionals appeared to be more neutral. The results cannot be generalized due to the small sample size and the differences in the sizes of the groups examined. However, the somewhat shared interpretation of the situation between the groups of professionals may indicate that conditions for multiprofessional collaboration are, from this point of view, good. According to previous research, together with this study, further research is needed to better understand and to develop the multiprofessional collaboration in education when working with children placed in care.