Concern Over Quality Of Child Foster Care

There has been a sharp rise in the institutional care of minors in Finland. The Finnish Federation of Foster Care Associations says that today only one-third of foster children live in family situations. The Federation adds that in contrast, in neighbouring Sweden 70 percent of foster children are placed with families. Still at the start of the 1990s, over 60 percent of children in need of placement care were in foster families in Finland. Increasingly, foster children are placed in institutions or professional foster care homes, even though studies have shown that placement in private families leads to fewer problems for the children. At present there are around 16 000 children in the country in care outside of their own homes. The Finnish Federation of Foster Care Associations also says monitoring and support for foster families is deficient in Finland, with one social worker often having responsibility for up to one-hundred foster families. The National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health has recommended that each social worker should have no more than 25 case families to deal with. YLE