Foster - Family Care for the Elderly: Surrogate Family or Mini-Institution?

The rationale behind adult foster care (AFC) has been that "participation in the life of the family" is superior to institutionalization. The extent to which AFC is familial has been widely debated, ranging from claims that this environment provides a surrogate family, to claims that it is no more than a mini-institution. This paper discusses the extent to which elderly clients are integrated into the family and the method by which such integration was measured in a sample of one hundred adult foster homes in New York State. The four dimensions used to measure familism were Affection, Social Interaction, the performance of Ritual, and the minimization of Social Distance.