Congruence and incongruence in the perception of family' among foster parents, birth parents and their adolescent (foster) children

Over recent decades, listening to children's voices and viewing children as competent actors has gathered momentum in research as well as in practice. Acknowledging children's perspectives requires sensitive listeners who are willing, deliberately and as realistically as possible, to reconstruct children's ways of seeing. In our study, based in Norway, we investigated the views of 22 adolescents in long-term foster care and 15 of their birth parents and 21 of their foster parents. Using Q methodology, we explored congruence and incongruence in the perception of family among foster parents, birth parents and their adolescent (foster) children. We found three family perspectives among the adolescents. Within two of these perspectives, there seem to be more congruent understandings of the children's perspectives among the parent groups. We discuss some main implications in light of these findings. In Norway, as in many other countries, the policy of child welfare is that children first and foremost should grow up with their birth family. When out-of-home placements are necessary, a basic principle is that children should remain in contact with their birth family.