In the canton of Zurich, around 40% of foster care arrangements are within the family, but only slightly more than 1% of these receive social-educational support from DAF – compared to almost 30% in non-family cases. Since the Zurich Child and Youth Home Act (KJG) came into force on 1 January 2022, all foster parents are entitled to appropriate compensation and, if necessary, DAF support. Despite this legal provision, kinship care relationships remain largely unsupported, even though complex relationship dynamics, loyalty conflicts and other stress factors suggest a need for targeted intervention.
The pilot project aims to identify success factors for flexible, needs-based DAF support in kinship care relationships. To this end, related foster parents and foster children from primary school age onwards will be surveyed using questionnaires and interviews about their needs, the prerequisites for using such services and any existing barriers.
At the same time, three DAF providers will be involved in workshops and interviews to analyse how flexible their services can be and whether support is possible without formally employing the foster parents.
The project takes into account all phases of foster care placement – from admission to the course of care and crisis situations to discharge – in order to identify time windows for needs-based social education intervention. The findings will be incorporated into the development of specific success factors and recorded in an implementation plan for the next two years after the project’s completion, the implementation of which will be continuously evaluated by the AJB.
The project is being scientifically supported by the ZHAW. The transferability of the results to other cantons is ensured by intercantonal exchange groups, which also take into account differences in the legal framework – such as the lack of a legal right to DAF support or the lesser importance of DAF in some regions, for example in French-speaking Switzerland. The results of these dialogues will also be incorporated into the development of the success factors.
