INTRODUCTION

Foster care of children has a remarkably long history in Scotland. As a social practice, it has doubtless occurred since time immemorial. Legally, however, the patria potestas (the almost unbridled power of the father over the “legitimate” child and, to a lesser extent, the mother over the “illegitimate” child) was in principle inalienable. Nevertheless, it included the power to determine on a day to day basis where the child was to be and some parents exercised this power by sending the child away to live with other relatives, or acquaintances, or with tradesmen who might teach the child an economic skill; other parents would pay others to bring up the child on their behalf and avoid thereby inconvenience (if for example, the mother had died) or embarrassment (if the child were “illegitimate”). At least to some extent, the law has attempted to regulate that type of practice for almost 150 years. But the sending of a child to be brought up by someone other than his or her parents might also be done under the authority of the state and this practice has been subject to legal regulation in Scotland, if in rudimentary form, for almost half a millennium.

The practice of state authorities and charitable bodies sending children over whose care they had responsibility to be brought up by private individuals was by the mid-nineteenth century usually referred to as “boarding-out”: a child was boarded-out with someone who, normally, received an allowance to cover the basic costs of feeding and clothing the child. The terminology of “fostering” began to take root between the two World Wars in the twentieth century but it was not until late in that century that the terminology of “fostering” completely replaced that of “boarding-out”.