In plain language
The number of children in out-of-home care in Australia more than doubled in a decade, yet the number of people willing to be foster carers went down. Recruitment campaigns typically treat the community as one uniform audience, but agencies actually know very little about why most people never consider fostering. This study took an unusual approach: instead of surveying carers or social workers, it surveyed 897 members of the general public who had never fostered, deliberately sampling 14 different cultural backgrounds to reflect Australia’s multicultural population.
At the whole-population level, the most common reasons for not fostering were simple: 40% said they knew nothing about foster care, about a quarter were busy with their own children, work, or family and friends, and 22% said no one had ever asked them. But the picture changed when the researchers split the sample into subgroups. People who said they would consider fostering in the future were younger, more often female, more likely to already have children — and far more likely to say the only thing stopping them was that nobody had asked. Those who would never consider it cited personal characteristics, such as having no interest in children, that no advertising campaign is likely to change.
Reasons also varied by cultural background: the Vietnamese group most often cited knowing nothing about fostering, the Macedonian and Maltese groups were busiest with their own children, and the Dutch group most often said no one had ever asked them. The practical message is that generic marketing aimed at everyone has limited effect. Agencies can recruit more of the carers they most need — including carers who share children’s cultural backgrounds — by directing tailored information and personal invitations at the right subgroups.
Key findings
- Among 897 Australian adults who had never fostered, the top reasons were not knowing anything about foster care (40%), being busy with their own children (25%), work (24%) or family and friend commitments (24%), and never having been asked (22%).
- 40% of non-carers said they would consider fostering in the future; this “potential foster carer” group was significantly younger, more female, and more likely to have children of their own than those who would not consider it.
- Potential foster carers were significantly more likely to say no one had ever asked them (35% vs 14%), suggesting agencies could recruit many carers simply by communicating and inviting more effectively.
- People who would never foster more often cited hard-to-change personal factors: being too busy with family and friends, seeing fostering as too big a commitment, or having no interest in children.
- Barriers differed by cultural background — for example, the Vietnamese group most often cited lack of knowledge about fostering, while the Dutch group most often said no one had ever asked them.
- The results show heterogeneity in the foster-care “market” and support customised, culturally targeted recruitment strategies over generic community-wide campaigns.
How to cite
APA
Randle, M., Miller, L., Dolnicar, S., & Ciarrochi, J. (2012). Heterogeneity among potential foster carers: An investigation of reasons for not foster caring. Australian Social Work, 65(3), 382–397. https://doi.org/10.1080/0312407X.2011.574229
BibTeX
@article{randle2012heterogeneity,
author = {Randle, Melanie and Miller, Leonie and Dolnicar, Sara and Ciarrochi, Joseph},
title = {Heterogeneity among potential foster carers: An investigation of reasons for not foster caring},
journal = {Australian Social Work},
year = {2012},
volume = {65},
number = {3},
pages = {382--397},
doi = {10.1080/0312407X.2011.574229}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
- Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis
Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.