ABSTRACT
This chapter describes some of the adolescents’ main preoccupations in relation to their birth families, and discusses how these affected them and their foster parents and the relationship between them. It explores ways in which foster parents’ approach either helps or hinders adolescents to come to a more realistic appraisal of their families. The adolescents had two main preoccupations in relation to these contacts. Firstly they were concerned with exploring and coming to terms with their feelings about their family. Secondly, they were preoccupied with testing out their birth family’s current and future reliability; this was particularly linked to their need to find a home base for themselves when the time limited placement ended and they left care. Adolescents need to feel safe enough and to be given permission to make internal journeys of exploration to and fro between their foster family and birth family as well as to travel the miles between them.
