Children in Residential and Foster Care – a Swedish Example

The article reports on a longitudinal study of children placed in a children’s home in Malmö, Sweden, at the beginning of the 1980s. The 26 children, placed when younger than four years of age and staying more than four weeks in the children’s home, were followed up three and nine months after leaving the children’s home as well as five, ten and fifteen years later. Interviewing the parties concerned was the predominant research method. Twenty of the 26 children in the research group also had later experiences of out‐of‐home care, including foster care, in addition to the stay at the children’s home. This article is about them, 15–20 years old when interviewed in the latest follow‐up study. Three aspects of “outcome” are focused on: the degree of stability in the children’s living conditions; relationships to parents and foster parents; well‐being and emotional and behavior problems. Bearing in mind that the concept of well‐being is relative, a cautious conclusion is that a third of the children in the study experienced well‐being, a third felt “o.k.,” and a third had serious problems, including criminal activities and drugs. The somewhat unclear connection between well‐being, stability in living conditions, and sense of family belonging is discussed.