Abstract: Long-term foster care in England has been described in policy documents as a legitimate permanence option ever since the drive towards permanent family placements began in the 1980s (Thoburn, 1990; Schofield, 2009). But it was not until 2015 that long-term foster care became the subject of Government regulation and guidance with a view to establishing it more successfully as one of a range of permanence options in local authority procedures and practice (Department for Education, 2015). It is accepted that most children in care have a history of abuse and neglect and a range of emotional and behavioural difficulties (Ford, Vostanis, Meltzer, and Goodman, 2007; McAuley and Davis, 2009; Luke, Sinclair, Woolgar, and Sebba, 2014), which means that long-term foster care has to meet the needs of very troubled children. This challenge for social workers placing children for permanence in foster care is common to many jurisdictions, including Australia, where permanence is valued but 'felt security' (Cashmore and Paxman, 2006) can be hard to achieve.
