Redesign or Downloading of Services? A Critical Examination of a Restructuroing Program for Foster Care in New Brunswick

Foster mothers are volunteer or poorly paid caregivers for children that present themselves with increasingly more complex problems. Foster mothers have expressed discontent concerning their "working" conditions. New Brunswick is trying to address these problems by redesigning foster care service. But how does this impact on foster mothers? Although some of the proposed changes may be very progressive, there is also a danger that restructuring amounts to downloading services to lower paid workers. Les meres de familles d'accueil d'enfants presentant des problemes de plus en plus complexes, elevent ces enfants benevolement ou bien son mal remunerees. Elles ont exprime leur mecontentement face a leurs conditions de "travail". Le Nouveau-Brunswick tente de repondre a ces problemes en reconceptualisant le service de familles d'accueil. Mais comment ceci affecte-t-il les meres? Meme si certains des changements proposes s'averent etre progressifs, la restructuration risque tout simplement de transferer les services aux travailleuses touchant un moindre salaire. Introduction Foster care services have undergone dramatic changes in the last 20 years: children who enter care are older and exhibit more serious problems than before and fewer families are willing to foster (Report of the Task Force on Foster Home Services, 1990; Foster Care as a Residential Family Resource, 1990). In 1986 more than 900 families provided foster care in New Brunswick, but this number dwindled to less than 700 families in 1994 (Report of the Task Force on Foster Home Services, 1990, p. 17). In other provinces foster care services are also in turmoil. In 1988 foster mothers(f.1) in several Ontario Children's Aid Societies threatened to go on strike to protest their "working conditions." They complained that they were a cheap "dumping ground for society's problem children" (Kendrick, 1990, p. 4). They demanded more financial compensation and more support for their services. Because of the increasingly greater needs of the children who enter care, and the subsequent higher demands on the skills of the decreasing pool of foster mothers, a discussion concerning the "professionalization" of foster care is taking place. In Ontario, among child welfare administrators, this discussion centres around two main issues: increased levels of training for foster mothers and greater compensation for their services. Increased financial compensation to foster mothers is not motivated by altruism but more by necessity. Foster care must compete with other types of caring work that is better paying for the women involved, "[I]n light of increasing competition for the services of potential foster parents from other services that can be carried out in the home but do not carry the same 24-hour-a-day stresses, such as supervised private-home day care" (Foster Care, p. 24). According to the same report, foster mothers also need "a more extensive repertoire of skills than in the past" because of the increased levels of problems foster children bring with them when entering care (Foster Care, p. 20). In New Brunswick, the sense of "crisis" is situated in different locations for the various players in the foster care system. For the child welfare agency, in New Brunswick the provincial government, the "crisis" in foster care is mostly located in its inability to attract enough foster mothers with whom to place apprehended children, especially as many of these children are displaying more severe problems than ever before. From the perspective of the foster mother, the crisis is located around her kitchen table. These women have to cope with children with severe behavioural, and sometimes substance abuse, problems (Foster Care, 1990). For the foster children, the "crisis" may result in inappropriate placements that can cause them more damage or may set them adrift in the system. To forestall foster mothers from closing their doors "prematurely," to avert an "over-reliance on more costly and sometimes less effective alternatives, such as group homes," and to keep abreast with national trends (professionalization), a complete overhaul of foster care services in New Brunswick was proposed in the report Redesign of Foster Home Services in the Province of New Brunswick (1992). …