Love and belonging in foster carer recruitment materials in New South Wales, Australia

Background: In order for foster care placements to be considered good, research has identified that children need to experience love and belonging in the home. It is therefore important that foster carer recruitment target individuals who are able and willing to attempt to provide love and belonging to the children placed with them. Objective: To quantify the extent to which and how foster carer agencies represent love and belonging in foster carer recruitment materials. Participants and setting: Foster carer recruitment material collected in New South Wales (NSW), Australia between August 2016 and March 2017. Methods: Phrases including the word “love,” “belong,” or “belonging” or text that described aspects of belonging were identified in recruitment materials and coded using conventional content analysis. Results: Eleven agencies (42%) did not address the need for children to be loved in foster care, ten agencies (38%), did not address the need for children to experience belonging in foster care, and eight agencies (31%) did not address either love or belonging in recruitment materials. Where recruitment materials included the word love, it was used in a very limited way. Belonging was more explicitly and practically addressed however, some recruitment materials contained content describing policy or encouraging practice that would undermine belonging. Conclusions: In order to recruit foster carers who are willing to attempt to provide love and belonging to children, recruitment materials need to be clear that children in foster care need to be loved and to feel like they belong and that foster carers should seek to provide this.