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

由于养父母的身份产生于公共儿童福利机构对寄养儿童的安置，因此寄养父母应该具有很强的公共性。然而，在日本的儿童福利实践中，寄养父母往往被认为是创造准收养家庭关系的私人父母。这种做法模糊了养父母权利和责任的基本性质。通过对美国寄养制度的分析和比较，笔者提出了日本寄养制度的两个基本目标：（1）提供高质量的照顾，以满足每个儿童的特殊需要;（2）制定一个长期目标，使寄养儿童能够以符合其最大利益的方式离开寄养，并确保实现这一目标所需的服务。然后她分析了寄养父母应该拥有和应该承担的权利和责任，以服务于寄养安置的这些基本目的。

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.