The kinship fostered youth: a program to promote resilience

Kinship foster care (KFC) is the child protection alternative most used in many countries, including Spain. Nevertheless, KFC is the least attended child protection alternative by professional supports. Fostered youth, as part of a foster family system, has specific needs of support due to family history and process of separation and adaptation to a new family, even if it is with relatives. This article presents a Support program for teenagers in kinship foster care developed by the research group GRISIJ. The program is based in a need analysis assessment. The most relevant needs found are: characteristics of Foster care in kinship family; family history; foster family and foster child; biological family and foster child; self-awareness; healthy family life; free time; the future after fostering. These needs were transformed into an educational group program which goes from problem intervention to resilience intervention. The program has 9 sessions of 2 hours each and has being piloted with a group of kinship fostered youth. As result some changes have been introduced in the program, especially in the area of managing their personal histories. Here we present the revised program, as well as a reflection of the main changes introduced to promote resilience after the experience.