Book review : Foster care in Australia - An essay review

Abstract

The foster care system for children and youths continues to be criticized throughout the world - in my view, rightly - as inadequate and in a perpetual state of crisis, despite numerous studies and calls for reform in country after country. It is, therefore, important to examine the findings of these studies and try to learn how to improve services on behalf of children and youths who enter foster care as well as their birth families and substitute carers. In this essay I review 'Children in Foster Care', an Australian study carried out by James Barber and Paul Delfabbro, who are well-known as child welfare researchers in Canada and Australia respectively.