The objective of this meta-synthesis was to systematically synthesise qualitative research that explores foster children’s perspectives on participation in child welfare processes. Searches were conducted in Medline (OVID), Embase, PsycINFO, and Social Science Citation Index. Children in non-kinship foster care in any setting (high-income, middle-income, low-income countries) who self-reported their experiences of care (removal from home, foster family processes, placement breakdown) were eligible for inclusion. Selected studies took place in 11 high-income countries. A total of 8436 citations were identified and 25 articles were included in this meta-synthesis. Studies summarized the views of 376 children. Children had been in foster care for between two weeks and 17 years. Findings synthesize ‘facets’ of children’s participation (e.g., being asked vs making decisions), as well as children’s perceived barriers and facilitators to participation. One main priority for children was the quality of their relationships, especially in terms of values (e.g., fairness, honesty, inclusivity). No one way of participating in child welfare processes is better than another, as some children more clearly expressed a desire for passive listening roles and others indicated a desire for active roles in decision-making. However, meaningful adults in foster children’s lives have a responsibility to act in a way that strengthens the emphasis on children’s needs and voices.

For this meta-synthesis we 1) conducted a systematic search, 2) quality appraised included articles, and 3) inductively analyzed included studies. This data set contains the coding for the data analysis. Authors independently placed the primary data from each study and its corresponding code into an Excel file, and these files were compared for consistency. Primary data, usually found in the Results section of included articles, included children’s quotes and study authors’ summaries of children’s words when direct quotes were not available. As Dryad does not redistribute any data acquired from a source that is under copyright, and all of the articles in this data set are under copyright, the excel file in Dryad indicates if a theme is “present” (marked with a 1) or “absent” (marked with a 0) in the included articles (denoted by the citation of the relevant article).

This data set is contained in an Excel file, so Excel is required to open the data file.