Hi Nick, I did some work for a local authority examining this topic not too long ago. I remember struggling to find a reliable and practicable metric for quality but did think that some of the material covered in the article below was useful.

Joseph, M., O'Connor, T., Briskman, J., Maughan, B., & Scott, S. (2014). The formation of secure new attachments by children who were maltreated: An observational study of adolescents in foster care. Development and Psychopathology, 26(1), 67-80. doi:10.1017/S0954579413000540

In the end my client went with a foster carers self report (20 or so closed item questionnaire) and supervisor's assessment. The self report was developed in consultation with foster carers representatives who were able to reassure colleagues that it was fair and not too burdensome. However, they did not develop a uniform assessment mechanism for supervisors so it was always hard to amalgamate the two sources of evidence. I think their major difficulty was not wanting to alienate foster carers by giving them the idea that they were being assessed as the LA needed those placements.

Don't know if this is any use to you but best of luck with it, IGH

We used quality measures and then created a systemwide average as a benchmark. Supplemented with Chart reviews

this info is available at http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/acs/pdf/provider-bulletin/2016/sep12/FY2017FCScorecardMethodologyUpdate.pdf

I agree with Alison Jordan.

Majordavid - the system wide evaluation of quality of care is not intended as a substitution for home visits and providing support to foster and adoptive families. Your generosity of spirit will endure in those you've nurtured.

Thanks, all, for your helpful responses. This has given us a lot to think about, and some helpful leads. We've developed a programme to support foster carers (the Reflective Fostering Programme), and are designing an evaluation study at the moment. Of course the ultimate aim is to show that we've made a difference to the lives of the children in care - but as the intervention is with the foster carers, we were interested to show the impact on the quality of care provided. We plan to use a number of self-report measures (e.g. to look at carer stress levels, burnout, feelings of carer competence etc.), but felt that only using self-report could limit the validity of our findings... It is a complex area, so appreciate the ideas that have been shared!