Rights and responsibilities of foster parents: bridging public and private law perspectives

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Since the status of a foster parent generates from a public child welfare agency's placement of a foster child, foster parenting ought to have a very public nature. However, in Japanese child welfare practice, foster parenting tends to be considered as private parenting creating quasi-adoptive family relations. Such a practice has obscured the basic character of foster parents' rights and responsibilities. Upon careful analysis and comparison with the American foster care system, this researcher proposes two basic purposes of the Japanese foster care system; (1) providing good quality of care that serves specific needs of each child in care; and (2) setting a long-term goal that enables a foster child to leave foster care in a manner that serves his or her best interest, and ensuring services necessary to achieve that goal. Then she analyzed what rights and responsibilities foster parents should have and owe to serve these basic purposes of foster placements.