Undervalued, misled, & isolated: foster parents’ experience of (mis)attunement within our compliance-centered system

Youth living in foster care requires supportive relationships with attuned caregivers to heal from trauma and meet goals for improved well-being and permanency. However, high levels of stress and compliance-focused system requirements often impede foster parents’ efforts to provide this level of care. Despite the crucial role foster parents play in creating positive outcomes for youth in care and the challenges they face in doing so, limited research has examined the processes by which high quality relationships between foster parents and youth in care develop. This study used four sets of focus groups with 21 foster parents to explore how participants understood, defined, and experienced the relational processes of attunement and misattunement. Participants were then provided with a draft of the Foster Parent FAN (Facilitating Attuned Interactions; Gilkerson et al., 2012) framework, as well as a brief training on the model. Facilitators then examined with foster parents how to tailor the construct of attunement and related training to best reflect foster parents’ needs and experiences. Findings suggest that rather than attunement, misattunement (as characterized by feeling undervalued, misled, and isolated) is the normative relational experience of foster parents. This experience of misattunement impedes access to needed support and services for youth and the families that care for them. According to study participants, misattunement as the pervasive relational process exacerbates the likelihood of foster parent burnout and turnover. Findings suggest a need for increased attunement in relationships throughout the child welfare system, and the potential of the FAN model as adapted to foster parents for promoting strong relationships and well-being.