We cannot continue to treat foster carers as secondary players in a bureaucratic game, write John Rolé and Edgar Galea Curmi
Foster carers spend 24 hours a day with the child. Their insights should carry significant weight alongside those of a social worker. Photo: Shutterstock.com
In the complex ecosystem of Maltese social services, a fundamental misunderstanding is quietly undermining our most vulnerable children. For too long, over the past few years, a prevailing narrative has framed foster carers as ‘clients’ or recipients of a service, lucky beneficiaries of a state programme that provides them with a child and a monthly allowance.
As professionals who have spent decades drafting Malta’s first fostering laws and building the national service from its infancy to supporting over 500 children, we have seen the damage this mindset causes. To truly safeguard ‘looked-after’ children, we must turn this thinking upside down. Foster carers are not clients; they are the most valuable statutory resource the state possesses.
The anecdotes currently emerging from the field are, frankly, alarming. Recently, a couple who had just completed their gruelling training were told by a social worker that they were only fostering “because they had no children of their own”. Such a comment reduces a profound act of social service to a mere personal void-filling exercise. It ignores the professional-grade sacrifice required to open one’s home to a child in crisis.
Even more distressing is the reality for licensed couples who find themselves threatened with the removal of their licence because they advocated ‘too much’ for the rights of the child in their care. When services prioritise ‘placating’ biological parents over the stability of the child and view the foster carer’s advocacy as an ‘inconvenience’, the system has lost its moral compass.
Even our political rhetoric falls into this trap. We often hear politicians boasting about increases in foster care benefits as if they are handing out generous gifts. Let us be clear: that money is not a ‘benefit’ for the carers; it is an investment in a child’s right to a stable, healthy and nurturing home. Every cent provided is a fraction of what it would cost the state to provide inferior institutional care.
The law defines children under state responsibility as “looked-after children”. If the state is the legal guardian, then foster carers are the state’s most vital hands-on partners. They are an extension of the statutory services, performing a role that no office-based professional, regardless of their dedication, can ever fulfil.
When we view foster carers as ‘clients’, we create a toxic power imbalance. This leads to:
A lack of agency: Carers feel unable to speak up for the child’s needs for fear of being labelled ‘difficult’ or ‘uncooperative’. This sense of helplessness is compounded by chronic court delays; when legal proceedings drag on for years, children in foster care and their foster families are forced to live in a state of permanent instability, unable to provide the long-term security a child desperately needs because the system cannot provide a timely decision.
Systemic burnout: When carers are treated as subordinates rather than colleagues, they lose the essential professional support network necessary to handle trauma-informed parenting.
Resource misallocation: Financial support is viewed through the lens of ‘charity’ rather than the essential funding required to give a child a dignified, normal life.
Our courts must prioritise fostering cases with the urgency they deserve
To fix this, we need a radical shift in how we conceptualise the fostering relationship. We must move toward a professional partnership model.
First, we must acknowledge the resource. The state does not have enough beds, hearts or homes. Foster carers provide all three. They are not ‘lucky’ to have a child; the state is incredibly fortunate to have them.
Second, we need shared decision-making. Foster carers spend 24 hours a day with the child. Their insights should carry significant weight alongside those of a social worker. They must be seen as part of the professional team ‘around the child’, not as outsiders looking in.
Finally, we need financial realism. We must stop talking about the foster care allowance as if it is a salary or a bonus.
It is a resource for the child. True partnership means providing carers with whatever financial, psychological and educational tools they need to succeed in their mission.
The measure of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable, but the strength of a child protection system is how it treats those who do the heavy lifting. We cannot continue to treat foster carers as secondary players in a bureaucratic game.
Furthermore, we must address the judicial paralysis that leaves children in limbo. Justice delayed is stability denied. Our courts must prioritise fostering cases with the urgency they deserve, ensuring that the legal system acts as a bridge to a permanent home rather than a barrier.
Without timely court decisions, the ‘partnership’ we advocate for is hamstrung by a system that prioritises procedural box-ticking over the ticking clock of a child’s childhood.
If we want more families to come forward, and the need remains desperate, we must offer them more than just a licence. We must offer them respect, professional standing and the recognition that they are our partners in the most sacred duty of the state: the protection of the child.
It is time for our services and our politicians to stop looking down at foster carers as clients. It is time to look them in the eye as equals. They are not the problem; they are the only solution we have.
John Rolé is a social worker and the founder of Malta’s fostering services. He is an advisor to the National Foster Care Association of Malta (NFCAM).
Edgar Galea-Curmi, a lecturer in Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Malta, contributed to the drafting of the country’s first fostering legislation.