Psychological Basis of Social Support for the Creation and Functioning of a Foster Family

Abstract

The urgency of the problem of social and biological orphanhood in modern Ukraine is determined by constant growth and is determined by socio-economic, moral and ethical, psychological difficulties of functioning. Most children deprived of parental care are in state educational institutions, which unfortunately are not able to exercise individual educational influence on each child. Accordingly, the priority form of placement of orphans of family education. The success of the functioning of these forms is possible under the conditions of the effectiveness of their social support. The purpose of the article is to analyze the leading areas of social support of foster families and to determine the psychological basis of social support for the creation and functioning of a foster family. To achieve this goal, the following research methods were applied: at the first stage, we conducted a theoretical analysis, in particular, analysis of the scientific literature and semantic analysis of concepts to identify the component structure of social support; the second stage is the stage of expert evaluation using the method of focal objects (model of the psychological climate of the foster family). The article proves that the condition for successful socialization of a child in a foster family is a favorable psychological climate, which is realized through the following components: (i) Cognitive (intellectual) − objective ideas and knowledge about the specific psychological characteristics and needs of a child left without parental care; taking into account the individual characteristics of the child's development; understanding of its interests and values; (ii) Personal − motivation of potential parents, their expectations and attitudes towards the unborn child, personal characteristics (empathy, flexibility, resistance to stress); conducting pathocharacterological diagnosis; (iii) Activity − the presence of experience in raising children, the peculiarities of existing educational skills, taking into account their own children's experience; (iv) Family − the functioning of the family as a system, the peculiarities of relations in the family, in its subsystems (child-parent, marital), the involvement of the family in social life, the willingness to cooperate with professionals. Improving each component is a prerequisite for the successful functioning of the foster family.