Nordic Social Work Research

Kinship and network foster care in the Nordic countries

Kinship and network foster care is here defined as foster care placements where children reside with relatives (such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.) or someone within their close network (for example, a teacher, neighbor, etc.). As many researchers have highlighted, relatives or others assuming the everyday care of a child is a practice with deep-rooted traditions in many cultures. However, as a formal service within child welfare systems, kinship and network foster care is a more recent phenomenon.

In Denmark, Finland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, Greenland, and Sweden, legislation mandates that consideration must be given to whether someone within the child's family or network can serve as a foster home for the child. The prioritisation of kinship and network care by child welfare services is not unique to the Nordic countries, but is a trend observed in most Western nations today.

Research on kinship and network foster care dates back the 1990s in the United States. Researchers in the US had observed an increasing proportion of children growing up in kinship care across many states, yet there was limited understanding of who these children were, the circumstances in which they were raised, and how they fared. Consequently, many researchers began to investigate the characteristics and outcomes associated with kinship care. Over time, researchers from various countries have joined in the production of knowledge on kinship and network foster care, broadening the scope of issues under examination. While we now possess an extensive international knowledge base on kinship care, there are still several knowledge gaps. Moreover, we still lack knowledge from many countries. That is: some aspects of research is transferable between countries, but not all. Among the Nordic countries, for example, we still know very little about kinship and network care in Iceland, Finland, Greenland and Sweden, compared to Norway and Denmark. This includes limited knowledge about children’s lived experiences, support systems for kinship carers, decision-making processes in child welfare services, and culturally specific understandings of family and network. This disparity can be attributed to various factors, such as differences in funding opportunities and/or a lack of prioritisation by governments. Furthermore, as with many other topics in child welfare research, kinship and network foster care often appear to be a person-dependent area of study. With that said, however, much of what we actually know is derived from empirical research conducted around two decades ago. Like family life in general, kinship and network families are not static entities; they evolve over time in response to broader cultural and societal changes. This underscores the need for updated context-sensitive research that reflects contemporary family forms and welfare practices in the Nordic region. This also implies that kinship and network foster care cannot, and should not, be regarded as a temporary or peripheral issue in child welfare research. As one of the prioritised measures in many countries, it deserves to be recognised as a central topic in research.

For this special issue we invite researchers from the different disciplines represented in child welfare research. We welcome empirical studies (both qualitative and quantitative), as well as discussions based on relevant methodological and/or theoretical issues. We particularly encourage contributions that address Nordic-specific challenges, comparative analyses across countries, and studies that explore culturally grounded understandings of kinship and network care.   It is not a criterion that the researchers themselves are from the Nordic countries, but that the contribution gives new insight into kinship and network care in a Nordic context.

With this special issue, we aim to strengthen the Nordic knowledge base on kinship and network foster care and to stimulate new research collaborations across the region.