Elderly foster parents and parental school involvement

Abstract

Foster children often live in complicated relationships and belong to two families, a biological and a foster family. A biological family works poorly or does not function or works poorly at all, on the other side, a foster family faces a difficult task to create a loving, safe, non-evaluative environment for children where all needs will be saturated and will contribute to the wellbeing of all members of the family. Moreover, foster parents influence and model children's personality, influence their values and attitudes in general, including attitudes to education and schooling. Furthermore, they should be involved to help their children with school tasks at home. Foster parents' school involvement requires many skills and might be very demanding and stressful due to many circumstances on the side of elderly foster parents but also on the side of foster children. The aim of the study was to describe and analyse the experience of elderly foster parents with their school involvement. The first partial objective was to find out how elderly foster parents bring up foster children and their attitudes toward schooling. The second partial goal was to find out how elderly foster parents get involved and help their children with school requirements and tasks. A qualitative research method was used; the findings presented in this paper are taken from a descriptive qualitative case study. As a result, parental school involvement of elderly foster parents requires learning and developing new strategies to help foster children with their schooling. It also requires managing the role of "active facilitator" and supporter. Elderly foster parents should have the possibility of support from teachers but also other professionals.