Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Children and Youth Services Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/childyouth Foster parents between voluntarism and professionalisation: Unpacking the backpack Lieselot De Wilde ⁎ , Jochen Devlieghere, Michel Vandenbroeck, Bruno Vanobbergen Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Foster care Professionalisation Residential care Parenting Volunteers ABSTRACT Foster care is currently preferred over institutional care when children are in the care of the state. There seems to be a consensus on the voluntary origins of foster care, nonetheless there also seems to be a growing momentum for the professionalisation of this form of youth care. We contribute to the debate by means of an analysis of 33 semi-structured interviews with foster families in Flanders, exploring the tensions between voluntaristic and professionalising tendencies in foster care. Foster parents overall labelled themselves as loving volunteers as this creates a space to fail. Yet, they also appropriate themselves a specific know-how necessary to make educational decision concerning the child. Foster parents oscillate between the position of professional and volunteer, as becomes clear in discussions on how the foster child should name its foster parents, as well as in how foster parents conceptualise the past of the foster child, metaphorically conceptualised as its backpack. The search for the ‘right name’ and ‘the backpack’ metaphor illustrate the inescapable complexity of the foster placement. Conclusions on the nature of foster care are related to the conception of ‘the parent’ and ‘the nuclear family’, as well as to what shared upbringing may bring to the discussion. 1. Introduction Assuring the right of children to appropriate care is a constant social and political challenge. The Convention on the Rights of the Child stresses the role of the State in this process. However, all states struggle with the question of how to support and organise care for children who, for various reasons, must be placed outside of their home (Colton & Hellinckx, 1994; Leloux-Opmeer, Kuiper, Swaab, & Scholte, 2017). The answer to this persistent international social problem varies from family care (for example, foster care) on the one hand to residential care on the other. Although different forms of care have proven their worth, the placement of children in foster care has been favoured in recent decades (Blythe, Halcomb, Wilkes, & Jackson, 2013; Vanderfaeillie, Van Holen, De Maeyer, Gypen, & Belenger, 2016). This is also true in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. The first paragraph of the Flemish parliamentary act on foster care mentions that, above all other forms of care, foster care should be considered as the first choice for children who require out-of-home care (Codex Vlaanderen, 2012). The preference for foster care is legitimised through foster care's reputation as a “stable alternative placement to parental care” (Ainsworth & Maluccio, 2003, p. 46) and a way of meeting the child's right to parents and a family (Lundström & Sallnäs, 2017). It is argued that “families provide more personal attention, love, structure, and continuity of care than residential centres” (Scholte, 1997, p. 657). In particular, the voluntary commitment arising from charity made by foster parents is presumed to ensure that foster chil- dren receive warmth and love (Kirton, 2001). Due to the out-of-home care policies' clear preference for family placements, the foster care landscape has expanded, modified and ad- justed in recent decades in most Western welfare countries in different ways (Riggs, Delfabbro, & Augoustinos, 2009; Schofield, Beek, Ward, & Biggart, 2013). In Flanders, foster care has increased by 25% since 2014. In 2017 the number of children and young people in a foster family increased to 7568, an increase of 8% compared to 2016 (Weliswaar. be Cijfers jeugdhulp, 2017). The definition of foster care in Flanders is understood as: “the care whereby a foster carer voluntarily, under the guidance of a foster care service and at a cost reimbursement foster children” (Codex Vlaanderen, 2012). So considered volunteers, foster parents in Flanders are entitled to a daily expense allowance (between €13,53 and 21,80) independent of the child's need and the foster fa- mily's income but foster parents do not receive a salary (Codex Vlaanderen, 2012). Furthermore, the idea of permanence in foster care, and of progressing from foster placement to adoption is unknown in Flanders, however recently commentators have started to question these starting points of foster care, in the name of children's need for safety and stability (De Mayer, Vanderfaeillie, Vanschoonlandt, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.01.020 Received 19 October 2018; Received in revised form 14 January 2019; Accepted 15 January 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: lieselot.dewilde@ugent.be (L. De Wilde). Children and Youth Services Review 98 (2019) 290–296 Available online 18 January 2019 0190-7409/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T