Call for Papers

8th International

Foster Care Research Conference

University of Siegen

17-18th of September 2015

 

Foster Care is infused by development. Children develop in foster care and those who have been in foster care continue their development afterwards if we assume that development is a lifelong process. Foster care itself continues to develop in a changing world.

We welcome you to join our 8th International Foster Care Research Conference and trace the developments in foster care on different levels with us!

Besides plenary presentations we are planning to have several working group sessions and invite you to submit papers on one of these topics:

1. Voice of the child: How do foster children experience their development and their life situation as foster children? If we give foster children a voice, what will be our findings regarding their perception of their life situation and what are the topics they particularly wish to discuss? But also: what are the methodological challenges in doing research with foster children?
2. Diversity: European societies are changing; the societies and the families within the societies are more and more diverse. But also the children coming into foster care feature diversity. What does diversity mean for foster care?
3. Biographical trajectories: Development is a lifelong process. How do foster children develop after care? What are the outcomes of foster care? What can we find out about foster children in retrospective or longitudinal studies on children in care and former foster children?
4. Others: This is open to a variety of topics which do not fit into the other sections. Feel free to submit papers on return, transition, breakdown and other topics relevant to foster care.

The working groups are expected to take 2 hours, and each one is assumed to take a maximum of three presentations plus discussion. Participants are free to submit individual or collective papers. Those who submit individual papers will be assigned a working group. Those who wish to collectively arrange a working group session around a specific theme are invited to submit a joint proposal. The joint proposal should include a title for the session, the name of the session chair and/or contact person and abstracts for all the papers that will be included in the session (provided that they are accepted by the scientific committee). Despite the collective submission, abstracts are assessed individually. In case you submit less than three abstracts in your joint proposal, you should expect that the spare slots in the session will be assigned to other relevant papers.

Abstracts should consist of no more than 250 words. All abstracts should be given 3-5 keywords that will guide the scientific committee in the planning of the paper sessions. Please remember to note your name and contact details on the abstract.

Abstracts should be submitted to daniela.reimer@uni-siegen.de
Deadline for submitting abstracts: 15th of April 2015

Abstracts will be assessed by the scientific committee, and participants will be notified about acceptance before End of May 2015.

Members of the scientific committee:
Nina Biehal, University of York; Cinzia Canali, Fondazione Zancan; Hans Grietens, University of Groningen; Judith Pierlings, Daniela Reimer, Dirk Schäfer, Klaus Wolf, University of Siegen.