Along with the development of child welfare the support for parents is now seen more important. The work done with parents has been developed on the basis of the needs and wishes of clients.

With this exploratory thesis we will try to investigate how the parents of children in foster families are supported in the substitute care of Turku. Our research is especially about the methods and practices of supporting parents in addition with its effectiveness and the needs of improvements of it. The material of this qualitative research was collected with group interviews. The research material is composed of the experiences of three social advisors working in substitute care in Turku.

In the research we found out that the support for parents done by the social advisor in child welfare in Turku includes many tasks: among other things taking care of different things in parents’ everyday lives and interacting with them in the middle of their crises by listening and having conversations. The social advisor tries to find a suitable way to go ahead with every client by listening their needs and wishes so that every client gets support in the right time. The work done to support parents is nowadays needed and often the amount of clients for one social advisor increases too high. Regarding to the results of this thesis the biggest issue is about the lack of resources and its negative effects on planning and documenting the work.