Children who have experience with living in foster care are incomparably more vulnerable to experiencing trauma than children, who don't have such experience. Foster care serves as a mechanism to protect children, which means that foster care children already experienced adverse childhood experiences before entering foster care. These experiences can have a severe impact on a child's development and can also influence the way they think, act, and perceive the world in adulthood. Traumatic experiences do not necessarily end when children leave their families, as the transition to foster care can also be a source of trauma. During the transition, children can experience various losses as they are separated from their parents, siblings, and other important individuals to whom they are attached. The transition to foster care also means a change of environment, which disrupts the child's sense of security and stability. Professionals can also be a source of additional trauma if they do not act professionally, according to modern social work methods and with great sensitivity to prevent retraumatisation. Although the main reason for placing a child into the foster system is to protect it from experiencing more trauma, foster care doesn't necessarily mean an end to trauma for those children. Within foster care, children can experience unstable placements which can disrupt their sense of security and stability and can make the development of trusting and safe relationships quite hard. Children, who have experienced living in foster care, may also experience trauma when leaving the foster care system. If the ending of foster care is swift and final, the sudden transition means financial, housing, and other difficulties, which can be even more traumatic because of the absence of support.
After finishing the literature review and designing the theoretical part of my thesis, I conducted eight interviews with individuals who have experience with living in foster care in Slovenia and were over eighteen years old at the time of research. The focus of my research were traumatic experiences that occured before entering foster care, during the transition to foster care, during their foster care placement, and traumatic experiences that occurred while leaving foster care.
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