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Books & Resources

This prestigious study of former foster children was published a tantalising few weeks after I finished my book, Children in care revisited, so the findings were not available to me. I wondered then if it might be my own smaller and more personal project writ large, and have now read it with great interest. British social work research has made a late entry in the general field of consumer studies over the last decade and a half. Our American colleagues, perhaps influenced by the ethos of earlier client-centred work, were quicker to recognise that expertise belongs as much to the recipients of a service as to the professionals. Even so, very little has apparently been known in the United States about the 'graduates' of foster care (which there includes residential settings) the young people who are neither rehabilitated nor adopted but who 'age out' to their own responsibility. Responding to this challenge the author, who is Professor of Social Work at New York University, undertook a large scale study to discover how such young adults fare in society, how they view their lives, whether they are as psychologically damaged, dependent on public support and delinquent as had often been assumed, and how they compare with others of their age not in care. She also wanted to offer them an opportunity to speak so that we might learn from them. She gives her ear to former foster children and her eye to future policy changes. Festinger and her team set out to trace a potential sample of 421 young adults in their early to mid-twenties who had left foster care in New York in 1975, five years before. This search was pursued with remarkable persistence and devotion, involving many thousands of letters and a repertoire of other tracing methods. The discussion and findings in the book are based on an eventual 277 interviews and questionnaires. Comparisons are also presented with a further group of people who had 'aged out' in 1970, as well as with people the same age from general population surveys. The young adults' past is presented in detail in Part One. Both the objective and subjective components are explored: 'one cannot understand people's sense of wellbeing from a knowledge of their objective circumstances alone.' This sense was the touchstone against which a host of other factors was measured to discover which were associated with their present levels of happiness and self-esteem. Part Two describes the young people in the community now, their relationships and sources of support, the nature and amount of their contact with their biological and foster families, their education, employment and living conditions, and any troubles, personal or public.