ABSTRACT
Children whose family life is disrupted to the extent that they are received into care suffer great disjuncture and trauma to their sense of stability and safety. As long ago as 1989, the Children Act in England and Wales, and its equivalent legislation in Scotland, advised that siblings in foster care and residential units should be accommodated together, "so long as reasonably practical and consistent with their welfare". Child psychotherapists are well placed to be thoughtful over the struggles that children in care present with in relation to their sense of identity and the difficulties they bring into the therapy room in so many ways. Perhaps the wide spread of individual histories and individual sensibilities of young people in care should alert people most of all not to make too many assumptions. Research of the quantitative kind can be helpful in giving people parameters and lines of inquiry for the individual.
