Supplementary Files
Keywords
comparative research
family foster care
out-of-home care
How to Cite
Abstract
Fostering processes that occur in each country depend on historical and cultural factors that give rise to large international differences. Despite the fact that international comparisons offer a way of exchanging experiences, allowing mutual learning and transfer of good practice, we often encounter major barriers for its completion due to limited access to data on child protection practice, among other factors. Given these limitations, this article provides a comparative study conducted in Spain and Portugal. The aim is the evaluation of family foster care interventions in two countries where research in the field of child protection has traditionally been neglected. The profile of foster children, families of origin and foster families, as well as the features of the fostering processes were studied in a sample of 357 cases in Spain and 289 in Portugal. The comparison revealed significant differences related to the older age of Spanish foster children at the beginning of the foster placement. The profile of foster carers revealed older age, low educational level and frequent situations of multiple placements in Portugal. The comparative study has identified areas that require further attention in both countries, such as the generational shift of foster carers in Portugal or the need to speed up the decisionmaking processes for entry into a family foster placement in Spain. This article intends to be an encouragement for data collection and comparison in other Latin American countries.This journal is registered under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. Thus, this work may be reproduced, distributed, and publicly shared in digital format, as long as the names of the authors and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana are acknowledged. Others are allowed to quote, adapt, transform, auto-archive, republish, and create based on this material, for any purpose (even commercial ones), provided the authorship is duly acknowledged, a link to the original work is provided, and it is specified if changes have been made. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana does not hold the rights of published works and the authors are solely responsible for the contents of their works; they keep the moral, intellectual, privacy, and publicity rights. Approving the intervention of the work (review, copy-editing, translation, layout) and the following outreach, are granted through an use license and not through an assignment of rights. This means the journal and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana cannot be held responsible for any ethical malpractice by the authors. As a consequence of the protection granted by the use license, the journal is not required to publish recantations or modify information already published, unless the errata stems from the editorial management process. Publishing contents in this journal does not generate royalties for contributors.