Mrs. Aksoy described how much she and her husband enjoyed their foster arrangement and how quickly it occurred.
The case also highlighted the plight of the thousands of children who enter the UK every year under private fostering arrangements - most of whom, like Victoria, come from west Africa.
In practice, fostering arrangements in all the surveyed institutions are very stable, especially if compared with the situation in the USA or other western countries.
Very few fostering arrangements occur in UG County; foster care may be formal (legally mandated guardian) or informal, as occurs in cases when a non-relative takes on caring for orphaned or separated children, usually a neighbour or family friend.
While the social rupture thesis may be quite dominant in explanations of change of extended family childcare arrangements, it misses the diversity of households, and the varied and nuanced nature of childcare and fostering arrangements (Abebe & Aase, 2007; Chirwa, 2002; Foster, 2000; Meintjes & Giese, 2006).
For example, although sibship size tends to be associated with malnutrition in developing countries, this relationship is weak in West Africa, where malleable household boundaries and selective child fostering arrangements are thought to buffer against the negative consequences of large families (Desai 1992).
However, this figure excludes children in private foster care arrangements and some of those in secure youth justice settings, detention and boarding schools.
"Institutions and environments vary enormously across the world and within countries," Dr. Nelson said, "but I think these findings generalize to many situations, from kids in institutions to those in abusive households and even bad foster care arrangements".
"Of the 700 unaccompanied or separated children who have so far been interviewed across the country for tracing purposes, over 300 have found family links," he said, adding that the UN also tries to set up foster care arrangements for children.
