Children who are no longer able to live with their birth parents and are placed in the care system may have to move family and culture many times. Each foster family is from a different culture; whilst the placing social worker has been diligent in trying to find a family with a similar ethnic and cultural background to the child, the rhythm of every day life is different in every family and children struggle to make sense of the rules, both overt and covert that organise the life of the families with whom they live. For children who are adopted, either within the UK or from overseas, the sense of being "different" can be overpowering. This workshop aims to draw on the experience of participants to think about the issues that arise for children in these circumstances.
Sara Barratt is the team leader of the Fostering, Adoption and Kinship Care Team at the Tavistock Clinic. She will talk about her clinical experience of working with children and carers who are struggling to form a ‘family’ that fits for them and use participants' experience to consider the themes that arise from this work and how we should attend to them to provide a more secure environment for these children.