Non-kinship family foster care in Egypt

Abstract

This article describes the history and philosophy of foster care in Egypt. While journal readers will be familiar with the issues affecting their own work, they are less likely to know about fostering in other countries. This can be limiting as international comparisons can give practitioners, researchers and educators insights into their own work as well as skills to support children from different cultural backgrounds. The article shows that foster care in Egypt is not a recent development, indeed it dates back to ancient Egypt and the Egyptian kings, but the current legal system was formalised in the first half of the 20th century. While fostering services are usually based on western paradigms, the Egyptian approach has several distinct features due to its development through authentication processes that match services to the needs and cultural backgrounds of the children concerned. Explanations for these differences are given.

Norm Localization and Contestation: The Politics of Foster Children in Turkey

“…Turkey has spent the last decade trying to develop alternatives for children under state care, utilizing a mix of group homes and foster families. As with other states where foster care systems have been implemented, government policies, legal codification, and local implementation have led to differential outcomes that resonate differentially with varied stakeholders in each society (Maluccio et al 2006;Kang et al 2014;Kosher et al 2018;Megahead 2017). The state continues to play a significant role in regulating intimacy, "its political actors constantly interfer [ing] in the private domain to endorse legitimate and normative forms of family," in an effort to enhance its sovereign power to maintain and regulate public order (Kocamaner 2019).…”

“…Rather, the long arm of the welfare state now typically extends into families and private spaces of the home to arguably "save" children by placing them in new foster care systems. These novel legal and institutional arrangements enable the state to enlist, control, inspect and judge the lives of children and their biological parents, as well as that of foster parents (Coskun 2017;Megahead 2017). In the meantime, foster care models in Europe, North America and Australia have faced serious challenges in terms of sustainable outcomes, with critics speaking to a level of abuse, neglect and harm that foster children may encounter, and an urgent need for systemic reform, standardization and transformation (Matheson 2008).…”

“…The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children specify that states should strive to keep children with their families where possible and to encourage countries "to undertake efforts to reduce the numbers of children living in institutional care and, whenever possible, to prevent institutionalization in the first place" (UNICEF 2017). Almost all industrialized countries have developed foster care systems and there is pressure for the transition to familial care to be part of post-conflict reconstruction and development in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia (Vis et al 2016;Connolly 2014;Kang et al 2014;Maluccio et al 2006;Megahead 2017). Despite global support, challenges remain, such as recruitment and retention of foster families, long-term stability of the programs, and quality of outcomes for the children (Matheson 2008).…”