Abstract
This paper considers how foster parents support kinship care-givers, by examining the “kinship care-givers' support program” in Iwate after the Great East Japan Earthquake. After the earthquake, many people started to foster young relatives who had lost their parents. The Iwate Foster Parents Association (IFPA) tried to support them through this program. The IFPA has provided this program since October 2011.
I interviewed the president of the IFPA and found that foster parents were finding it difficult to support kinship care-givers, even though they both sides fostered children. Foster parents were unable to share their experiences because the reasons for deciding to be foster care-givers and the challenges and stresses they faced were quite different. Therefore, foster parents could not support kinship care-givers by drawing similarities between their experiences. Instead, the foster parents came to see the kinship care-givers every month only to be with them and informed them that they both lived in Iwate Prefecture and that the foster parents could take care of the children if kinship foster parenting became too difficult for them.
