Adoption &Fostering, Ahead of Print.
This study investigates whether existing children in a fostering household differ from young people in non-caregiving households in the timing of their transitions to key adult roles, known to affect later health and life chances. Using data from the ONS Longitudinal Study, we pooled records from census years 1971–2001 and linked them to follow-up records from 1981–2011. We identified 2,656 children living with a foster child and compared their profiles on the ‘big five’ transitions to roles of adulthood – finishing school, leaving home, finding work and becoming financially independent, getting married and having children – with those of other children without a foster child in the household (N = 209,453). We fitted logistic and multinomial models that controlled for childhood socioeconomic and demographic confounders to estimate the proportion achieving the five roles in early adulthood. When compared to those without a foster child in the household, a modest but reliably higher proportion of caregivers’ children achieved the transition to adulthood. There was some evidence that caregivers’ children might cope better with the transition to adulthood if they were older than the foster child or were female. The findings suggest that supporting foster parents with delaying their children’s transition to adulthood could become part of the role of supervising social workers.Plain Language SummaryThis study investigated whether children of foster carers differ from young people in non-caregiving households in the timing of their transitions to key adult roles which are known to affect later health and life chances. We used data from the ONS Longitudinal Study, which contains information from censuses for the years 1971–2011 for a one percent sample of the general population of England and Wales. We identified 2,656 children living with a foster child and compared their profiles on the ‘big five’ transitions to the roles of adulthood – finishing school, leaving home, finding work and becoming financially independent, getting married and having children – with those of 209,453 other children without a foster child in their home. We took account of differences in children’s social, economic and demographic conditions in our statistical analyses. We found that a modest but reliably higher proportion of foster carers’ children achieved the transition to adulthood before the age of 30 than the other children who did not live with any foster children. There was some evidence that foster carers’ children might have later transition to adulthood if they were older than the foster child or if they were female. Since it is early transitions to adulthood that are linked to poorer health and life chances later in life, the findings suggest that supervising social workers’ role could include supporting foster parents with delaying their children’s transition to adulthood.