Cultural sensitivity in the context of social services foster family in Turkey model: İstanbul and Bingöl example

There are cultural reasons behind why there is limited number of foster families in Turkey. This study aims to explore and depict the impact of culture on being foster parents and the process of maintaining this. Culture is the totality of material and moral values of a society that continues for generations. It means that culture has a direct effect on people's personal, family and social lives. In the study, the focus was foster parents model in Turkey, by taking into consideration the effect of culture, in the context of culturally alert social work. Some historical and global incidents have catalyzed the emergence of this model, and they are still effective. These events have also brought out the need for fostering children who are one of the disadvantaged groups. Occurrence of children who need for being fostered have mostly been caused by wars, migrations and urbanization after industrial revolution. In order to solve the problem, governments have tried to institutionalize; however, some disadvantages occurred by the institutions have been criticized. Therefore, philosophers, especially of the 20th century, had studied on modernism, institutionalism, labelling, and they improved critical perspective regarding the topic. Hence, some protective and preventive models have been developed pertinent to the children's social perspective, expectations, development, educational interests and self-sufficiency. The government in Turkey has, in recent years, been trying to popularize foster parenthood and adoption models as it is in the West by force of its responsibility towards the children needing being fostered. Filling a gap in this field by tackling the necessity of family-oriented model of protective and preventive work models and its cultural aspect is the goal of the study. Comparing to developed countries, Turkey is still far away from desired point in terms of foster family. Despite the campaigns conducted by Family, Labor, and Social Services, the need for foster families still continues. It has been determined that there is a need for multidimensional studies about the issue. Cultural reasons are mostly effective on why there is a limited number of foster families. These are some factors effecting that our country is still behind developed countries and far away from desired in terms of foster families: religion, tradition, values, social unconsciousness and insensitivity, conservative culture, lack of public service ads, that foster parents do not want to meet with the biological parents, and taken back of the child by them.The definition, functions and elements of culture are mentioned in the theoretical section of the study. And also the definition and aims of the social service are given. The relation between the sensitivity to culture and social service is tackled, besides the children who need being fostered and fostering model. The notion "children who need being fostered", the services provided for those children in Turkey, adoption, foster family and its definition and aim, foster family model in the World, foster family model in Ottomans, the history of the service of foster parents in Turkey, and the service of foster parents in today's Turkey were searched in the relevant literature, and given in this section. The field of study is the foster parents according to foster family regulations. In order to gain data during the research, the qualitative method was adopted with interviews, and observation techniques, as well. For his purpose, semi-structured interviews have been conducted, by taking into consideration the regional and cultural conditions, about experience and observations of 15 persons and researchers limited with foster parents, and the reasons of problems which they experienced. It was seen that foster parents had heard about foster family model from Social Service Centers (SHM), foster family department, institutions and organizations, friends/social environment, public service ads, NGO's, media, internet and TV. The motivators for foster parents to be a foster family are generally that they lived in fostering centers when they were children, not being able to have their own children biologically, social responsibility awareness, and desire to adopt. Another result gained from the study is that religious values and tradition has an impact on family-child match-up. Almost all of the foster parents had positive feedbacks from their close circle, and their children about their decision on having a child to foster. Most of the families have generally chosen the children from 0-6 age range and girls. Most of the foster families were in need of psychological and psychosocial support, and also it has been realized that they are lack of this kind of support