The purpose of this study is to clarify the concept and evaluation of Family Group Conference and Formal Kinship Care as well as recommended statutory and practical revisions within Japan. In England, Ireland, America, Australia, and New Zealand, Family Group Conference has been utilized to promote the use of Formal Kinship Care, which has brought about positive change for children. According to recent studies, there are a number of identified advantages of Formal Kinship Care that differentiate it from Formal Non-Kinship Foster Care. They are as follows: 1) the avoidance of trauma resulting from moving in with strangers; 2) the preservation of children's identity, self-worth, and sense of belonging by maintaining a familial, community, and cultural structure; 3) the continuation of relationships between foster children, kinship care providers, and biological parents; 4) a reduction of multiple placements; 5) an alleviation of stigma in the community. In contrast, there are a number of identified limitations of Kinship Foster Care. They are as follows: 1) children tend to remain in kinship care longer than in non-kin foster care; 2) the rise in negative feelings by kinship parents towards adoption and guardianship; 3) intra-familial friction between kinship parents and biological parents; 4) kinship caregivers may allow unauthorized contact between children and biological parents; 5) capability issues of the kinship parents (these may include economic or health problems, etc.); 6) gender issues－regarding female care givers, usually a grandmother or aunt, experiencing physical or economic burdens by providing for a child. The author makes suggestions for statutory changes and practical revisions within Japan referring to recent evaluations and studies.

    In Japan, where the birth rate remains very low, most children are carefully nurtured by their parents. Yet a number of children continuously have to live in a residential care institution for children or a foster parent's household as a result of parental child abuse or other reasons. I have been rearing such children as a foster parent for the past twenty years. I have had some hard times and I have sometimes felt like quitting, but now I feel I was right in deciding to be a foster parent. I learned that a child who had been in a state of chaos at the beginning would change as she/he grows older and as reliable relationships are gradually built between the child and her/his foster parents. After the big earthquake of 2011, the Japanese word “kizuna” (bonds) has been the focus of social attention. This is an opportunity for us to rethink important matters in this increasingly individualistic and nuclear-family-oriented society. No one can live alone. As long as you respect others, you can build reliable bonds with others. A nonbiological relationship between a foster parent and a foster child can grow to be a family bond.

    In response to international trends, Japan is currently clarifying its policies to promote family care and family-like care for children who are in out-of-home care. In the midst of such a movement, the author is involved in the promotion of the appointment of foster parents as well as in research and the implementation of support for foster parents from the perspective of social work and child/family well-being.
    However, the opportunity that I was offered this time is to provide my opinion not as a researcher but as someone who grew up with foster children as the biological child of a foster family.
    I recall spending my early childhood with children at the Japanese children's home where my parents worked as staff members. After retiring from the children's home, my parents became foster parents and established a family group home, and my post-teenage years were spent helping them foster many children. I also remember my time spent in providing foster care. During this time, I remember being aware of the difference in quality between foster care and residential care. In this paper, I intend to touch on the relationships that I developed while providing foster care through several events and discuss the various social challenges facing diverse families by considering the meaning of family and home.

    This paper discusses how to analyze foster care from the point of view of family sociology and clarifies what issues should be taken up. It assesses the conflicts that arise among foster family members as their actual family life differs much from what the family laws and family norms suggest, and categorizes the conflicts as 1) family relation management, 2) identity management, and 3) a support system reducing the burdens of management. Furthermore, those conflicts are considered from the point of view of the family sociology of “a family's diversification” and “socialization of a child's care.” Through this consideration, it implies that family sociology should analyze 1) how the “standard family” influences the “nonstandard family” in every phase (the role in a family, a scene, and a family's life cycle) and 2) how foster parents' consciousness of being “parents” affects the relationships with their foster children.