Assessment and support of the sibling relationships of long-term fostered and adopted children.

Over the past fifty years or more there has been a dramatic shift in the value placed on sibling relationships when vulnerable children need to be placed in out-of-home care. Historically, the practice was to care for such children in institutions and, typically, for siblings of different ages and sexes to be cared for separately. The move away from residential care to fostering services reflected a shift in values that recognised the importance of family relationships and a family context for care. Today, in the UK, around 90,000 children each year are looked after by the state, usually as a result of abuse and neglect. Around three quarters of these children are in foster care and some 4,700 children are adopted from care each year either individually or as a sibling group

This project will, for the first time, directly seek the views of children in the UK who are fostered and adopted on the significance of sibling relationships following family-based abuse and neglect.