MICA: Improving the mental health and well-being of foster carers by reducing compassion fatigue: an assessment of feasibility.

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Providing foster care for vulnerable children, who have often experienced abuse/neglect, trauma and loss, is demanding and stressful work. It requires foster carers to be have robust mental health and well-being due to the complex demands placed on them by the children in their care. Foster carers are at risk of experiencing compassion fatigue (emotional and physical burnout and/ or secondary traumatic stress) due to the demands of their role. The foster carer's home is also their place of work, so there is little opportunity to have a break to rest and re-charge.This not only affects their mental health and well-being, but also impacts upon the quality and consistency of care provided to the vulnerable children they look after. A multi-stage intervention to reduce symptoms of burnout and secondary trauma and increase feelings of compassion satisfaction in foster carers has been proposed in collaboration the National Association of Therapeutic Parenting (NATP). This will combine three of the NATP's current discrete interventions - 1)education about the signs, symptoms and management of compassion fatigue, 2) peer support and 3) access to online support materials, into one cohesive multi-stage intervention. The proposed study has been designed to: a) develop a sound logic model, b) assess the feasibility of trialling the intervention to foster carers experiencing symptoms of compassion fatigue, in order to improve their mental health and well-being and enable them to provide a more stable, empathic and consistent care environment for the vulnerable children they look after. and c) develop a manual and online support materials.The assessment of feasibility will focus on six key areas: practicality, adaptability, demand/ use, acceptability, implementation and integration.