Bonding in distance. A qualitative study into process and experiences with long term foster care placement after unintended pregnancy.

Every year, about 60 unintended pregnant women in the Netherlands consider giving up a child and about 20 (33%) eventually go ahead with adoption (Werdmuller & Bolt, 2019). About 10 chil-dren (17%) are placed in LFCP, 28 women(50%) decide to raise their child by themselves. Adoption and foster care are two forms of substitute parenting. A main difference is that adoption is a permanent arrangement: parental responsibility is transferred to the adopters and the adopted child loses all legal ties with their birth parents. Adoption only can be reversed in extremely rare circum-stances. Fostering is a temporary arrangement, where a child is cared for by another family. LFCP arrangements normally come to an end when the child reaches the age of 18. Foster carers do not have parental responsibility for the child which remains with the child's birth parents and/or the local authority. The child can have regular contact with their parents (De Baat, Van den Bergh, & De Lange, 2019). Most of the time the decision to give up a child for adoption is not easily made. In first instance, women who make the decision to give up their child for adoption are often relieved the decision is made and their problem has come to a solution. However, when time passes, women often start de-veloping feelings of regret about their decision. Moreover they start worrying about the development of their child, and experience the feeling of a painful loss (Bos, Reysoo, & Werdmuller, 2011). LFCP seems to overcome some painful issues of adoption: legal family ties stays intact and birth parents and children can maintain contact. This could be a reason for unintended pregnant women to decide for LFCP. However, in-depth knowledge about the option of giving up a child for LFCP and the course of these LFCP arrangements are scarce. Although research has been done on LFCP mainly the focus is on children who are in foster care on account of a compulsory out of home placement which differs from the situation of giving up a child after birth for LFCP. This makes it difficult for unintended pregnant women to make a well informed decision between giving up their child for adoption or for LFCP. Therefore the aim of the intended research is to address this existing gap of knowledge in the empirical literature by examining the experiences of parents, their children, foster parents and foster care counsellors with LFCP, and to clarify its benefits and disadvantages. The research has a participatory and qualitative character. Data collection consists of multiple cases studies, individual interviews and focus groups. Data is collected in 3 consecutive phases. Parents, children and counsellors contribute to the research design and participate in the study, not only as informants, but also as consultants in the various phases of data collection and -analyses, as well as co-designers in the phase of designing instruments that will contribute to improving support for parents in the decision making and in the counselling process.