Modeling the Care Worker’s Role as a "Mediator" between a Children’s Home and the Children’s Birth Families

Abstract

This paper describes the quality of the support practices of care workers in a Children’s Home by means of a network involving a Children’s Home and the children’s birth families, schools, and consultation center, using models of different phases. We constructed a model of the framework of the support system around a Children’s Home and interviewed eight care workers from three Children’s Homes. We focused on the networks involving the Children’s Home and the children’s birth families in the analysis, because this networks contain various points, like complexity of relationships between children and their family, impacts on children’s daily life and difficulties of homecoming, and it is needed to analyse this network in detail. We constructed a model that describes the actual support practices. This model describes the changing roles of the care worker as a support giver in daily practice in the Children’s Home and as a mediator for each network. Finally, we describe the support a care worker provided in an actual case and the dynamics of the support practices using the model.