Money in Foster Care: An Exploration of How Foster Care Grants Are Used By Foster Parents in South Africa

Foster care is a form of alternative care arrangement for children in need of care and protection. Upon the placement of a child in foster care, a grant is given to foster parents to provide for the needs of that child. A qualitative approach was adopted to explore how the foster parents in South Africa utilize the foster child grant. Purposive sampling was used to select twenty participants for the study. Data was collected from 10 foster children and 10 foster parents through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions, and analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings revealed that both foster parents and foster children make decisions about what to use the foster care grant on. However, some foster parents do not spend the grant as expected. The foster care grant is meant to assist in the upbringing of foster children and not as an extra income to the parents. The study concludes that the grant should be increased as the current amount does not meet all the children's needs and that social workers should intensify monitoring and supervision of foster care placements. It is recommended that future studies should develop a foster care grant supervision and monitoring framework.