Formulating foster care in Scotland for young children's emotional and mental wellbeing

Foster carers can play a key role in supporting a child’s recovery from abuse and neglect and improving their mental health, but optimising this requires appropriate formulation of the care arrangements. This is a report on a scoping study into the extent to which the way foster care as conceived and supported, provides the basis for meeting the emotional and mental health needs of young children. It focuses on children aged up to 60 months who have been removed from their parents’ care because of maltreatment, or risk of maltreatment and who have been placed in state provided (non-familial) foster care provision in Scotland. The project had three main objectives: 1. To establish what is known about the emotional and mental health needs of young children (aged zero to five years) coming into the care system. 2. To look at the preparation and support for foster carers in Scotland relevant to caring for these children, through analysis of local authority documents. 3. To explore the experience of foster carers in meeting the emotional and mental health needs of children, through interviews with a sample of foster carers.