Perceptions About the Role of Money in Contemporary Romanian Foster Care

Abstract

Despite foster care becoming central to the protection of children in state care in Romania following the push for a rights‐based approach in anticipation of European accession, empirical research on fostering remains sparse. Using a mixed methods qualitative design combining findings from 15 in‐depth interviews with 16 diverse expert participants with the analysis of a 2019 high‐profile scandal surrounding the international adoption of eight‐year‐old Sorina by Romanian‐US parents, this article explores systemic features of the role of money in contemporary foster care practice. The analysis explores three points of consensus articulated by experienced system insiders: (a) the stability of foster care placements; (b) the normalisation of quid‐pro‐quo arrangements between case workers and foster carers; and (c) inadequate monitoring and oversight of placements. To empirically explore the organisational context that leads to these systemic issues and the implications for care‐experienced children, we also expand on the widely mediatised Sorina case. In 2019, a prosecutor had to forcefully remove the adopted child from her former foster carer, who was keeping her without legal basis, to join her adoptive parents. The media attention led to a polarised public hysteria and politically motivated legal intimidation against the adoptive parents. The analysis unpacks the ways in which the relative financial generosity associated with foster care is seen by expert participants to lead to the self‐selection of poorly trained, rural families fostering mainly for economic reasons, with potentially undesirable consequences for cared‐for children's rights. The article contributes with a detailed account of the variegated ways in which money shapes foster care in contemporary Romanian child protection practice.