ABSTRACT
In many families and neighbourhoods, children are brought up by members of their extended family or with neighbours or close friends. An estimate by foster care organisations from West-Vlaanderen suggested that one in three of foster children end up in a family that know them already, either within their wider family or social network. The network usually selects a family that has been playing a supportive role in previous crisis situations and has shown itself capable of handling problems. In a social network placement there is also a shared past, but more restricted and less intense than in a family network. The most important feature of network placements may well be that there is always a specific past which people already share when caseworkers join the system. Some of the processes and interactions that have a central place in Nagy's contextual thinking have considerable influence on what happens within a family network.
