In the context of our European FORM-project, our approach is to guide foster care workers to empower foster families caring for unaccompanied children and youngsters with a refugee background. In view of the long-term consequences of unmourned loss, the lingering effects of a traumatic breakdown of humanity, ultimately complicated by elements such as survivor's guilt, identity confusion and other difficulties not seldom experienced by unaccompanied minors, our project focuses on the psychodynamics within foster families as well as on the possibilities of guidance for foster care workers working with foster families. For the foster care professionals: a knowledge base on research and best practices in the field of foster care for UMR, a training in exile-specific preventive or therapeutic foster care for foster families taking care of UMR. For authorities and policy makers: better foster family- based care solutions for UMR (outside large institutions), empowering de- institutionalization strategy, more and better care in the foster care sector (professionalization, international learning networks, and, the setting up of evidence based care) and inclusion of UMR in society.
Europe is facing a destabilising asylum crisis. Not only adults and families are coming to Europe in search of a safe and better life, young people and even children are arriving here unaccompanied by adults. Increasingly, European countries are choosing to host unaccompanied minors in foster care. However, these children and young people have specific problems and needs. Many have had very traumatic experiences and suffer greatly from separation from their families and community. They often find it difficult to trust new persons, such as foster parents. This can seriously jeopardise their development so that they may also struggle to build balanced relationships later in life. Foster care workers need to receive more knowledge and support in order to support the foster families themselves. This led to the European Erasmus+ project ‘Therapeutic foster care for unaccompanied minors and their foster families’. Its aim is to develop a model of therapeutic foster care grounded in research and promising practices, with a specific focus on the exile- and trauma-related psychodynamics that shape the foster care experience of unaccompanied minor refugees (UMRs).