Ecological Perspective: Guidelines for Planning Child's Foster Care Placement

The placement in foster care and its ceasing are ecological transitions due to the changes they bring and because of the roles assigned to their protagonists. The preparation of such transitions aims to not diminish the obstacles, a utopia that the degree of change does not allow, but to diminish them to a degree that makes the child integration in his/her next phase of life easier. This article reviews the work of some British authors who have taken a special interest in the preparation and closure of children's foster care. It also intends to legitimize, from a theoretical point of view, the relevance of using the ecological model as a guiding framework of that protective measure and suggests a set of practices which enhance the success of the transitions.