New or experienced foster parents as well as grandparents and other relatives caring for a child forced from home by a crisis will find help and hope in Practical Tools for Foster Parents.More than half a million children today live in out-of-home care, and many have special problems. The need for well-trained, loving foster parents has never been greater. In this book, Boys Town® offers these committed foster parents the professional tools they need, not only to care for foster children but to actually help them get better.Our approach to foster care focuses on building relationships with children, teaching them skills, and empowering them by teaching self-discipline and self-control. Inside, foster parents will find effective, research-based solutions for these common concerns:•Building a warm, trusting relationship with a foster child who still may have a strong attachment to his or her original family.•Working with the foster child's parents, who may be uncooperative or even hostile.•Creating a safe environment for your foster child, you, and your family.•Respecting your foster child's ethnic and cultural background, while teaching the child skills to help him or her succeed in the larger world.•Learning how to handle "blow ups" and prevent and correct misbehavior while you stay calm.•Teaching your foster child how to stay under control, solve problems, and make good decisions, even when he or she is angry or frustrated.•Handling transitions when a foster child moves to another placement or returns home.

Change a child's life! Reap the rewards of becoming a foster parent. Over 600,000 American children are in the foster care system each year—and the number is growing. So is the number of good-hearted people willing to become foster parents. But what does it take to become a foster parent? How does one begin? What about your own family? What does it cost? Success as a Foster Parent has the answers to these basic questions and much more. Written by Rachel Greene Baldino, MSW, in association with the National Foster Parent Association, it is the first and only commercially available book to clearly explain the process of becoming a foster parent. Readers will learn: • The questions to ask before making the decision to be a foster caregiver • How to research local state and private agencies • The financial cost and the compensation • The challenges involved in caring for children from infants to teens, including physically- and psychologically-challenged kids • Issues relating to schools, birth parents, supervisory visits, vacations, and dozens of other factors • All about adoption In addition to concrete information, there are dozens of moving stories drawn from interviews with veteran foster parents and tips about caregiving.

Screening applicants for adoption or foster homes has life-altering consequences for the children involved, yet there are incredibly few programs available to train screeners. The educational system that certifies thousands of social workers each year does not understand the specialized training required to screen adoptive and foster parents; social work schools provide minimal interview training and what training they do provide focuses on therapeutic interview techniques rather than screening skills. There is a clear need for a book like Adoptive and Foster Parent Screening, one that can be incorporated into course requirements and used by working social workers and psychologists involved with adoption and foster parent screening. Adoptive and Foster Parent Screening, written by a former social worker, who has placed hundreds of children into adoptive and foster homes, and a clinical psychologist, meshes the best of psychology and social work experience into a definitive guide for screening adoption and foster home applicants. The book provides information on: evaluating aberrant behavior and unhealthy parenting attitudes interview techniques psychological testing. Adoptive and Foster Parent Screening is based on case histories, research data, and interpretive analysis. The book is written in an accessible style free of technical language, thus making it appropriate for college-level students and professionals who don't have time to sift through empirical data to obtain accessible information that they can adapt to their profession.

The Essential Guide to Baby's First Year offers new parents a clear, comforting companion devoid of the "musts" and "shoulds" that abound in other new baby books. Rather than focusing on rigid guidelines to development, it acknowledges that babies are people, and they do things in their own time and ways. The authors are both parents, one of them with the additional benefit of being an experienced pediatrician, and their advice and suggestions are all based on medical knowledge and the latest advice on the baby grapevine. The Essential Guide to Baby's First Year content also includes: The moment of birth and beyond – what a newborn looks like, what the tests will be like, feeding, bonding, and taking the baby home. Clear explanations of milestones for the first year of life, broken up by quarters – and how they may vary from baby to baby. Advice and suggestions on feeding, caring for, and interacting with baby over the year. Teething, sleeping, crawling, pooping – how things happen and change as the months pass. Common illnesses, appropriate foods, necessary equipment, and more.

Discusses issues faced by those adopting special needs children, children who are older, who have emotional or physical problems, and/or who are of a minority group.

In Foster Care: How to Fix This Corrupted System, author Janet Solander presents stories of how Child Protective Services (CPS), Department of Family Services (DFS), and the foster system have failed the very children they are mandated to protect and hold safe. Solander shares heartbreaking incidents taken from the daily news as well as her own firsthand experiences as a foster parent. Only through public awareness is there any chance that the children in the system have any hope of being protected the way they should be. Every child has the right to a safe and secure home, but foster children sometimes find that being in the system brings them to a worse place than the home from which they were taken. Only through public involvement pressuring lawmakers to correct the shortcomings in the system will the innocent victims, the children, have the chance the system promises them. Foster Care explains what is happening with these children and what we can do to help correct this dire situation. When foster parents and children gain a stronger voice to advocate for them, only then will the system be able to take care of those who are most vulnerable.

Through a novel integration of child welfare data, policy analysis, and evidence-informed youth permanency practice, the essays in this volume show how to achieve and sustain family permanence for older children and youth in foster care. Researchers examine what is known about permanency outcomes for youth in foster care, how the existing knowledge base can be applied to improve these outcomes, and the directions that future research should take to strengthen youth permanence practice and policy. Part 1 examines child welfare data concerning reunification, adoption, and relative custody and guardianship and the implications for practice and policy. Part 2 addresses law, regulation, court reform, and resource allocation as vital components in achieving and sustaining family permanence. Contributors examine the impact of policy change created by court reform and propose new federal and state policy directions. Part 3 outlines a range of practices designed to achieve family permanence for youth in foster care: preserving families through community-based services, reunification, adoption, and custody and guardianship arrangements with relatives. As growing numbers of youth continue to "age out" of foster care without permanent families, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers have increasingly focused on developing evidence-informed policies, practices, services and supports to improve outcomes for youth. Edited by leading professionals in the field, this text recommends the most relevant and effective methods for improving family permanency outcomes for older youth in foster care.

How can professionals work together with foster carers to create stable and therapeutic foster placements? Team Parenting for Children in Foster Care describes a unique model of supporting children in care which involves foster carers and professionals working together in the best interests of the child. This book lays out the key principles of Team Parenting - to meet the needs of troubled young people in an integrated way and incorporate therapy within a wider team of social workers, therapists, psychologists and foster carers - as well as the theory behind it and interventions used. It details how the approach contributes to the recovery of looked after children and each chapter includes examples that illustrates how Team Parenting works in practice. Team Parenting for Children in Foster Care includes ideas for systems and individual practice that will inform and improve foster carers' and professionals' work in any setting.

Across the social welfare and human services fields, interest is growing in how to apply research to influence policy and practice; simultaneously, with globalization's advance, it is clearer than ever that an international perspective is vital in understanding how social, political, and institutional contexts affect research and dissemination practices. This volume, with contributions from an array of eminent researchers and practitioners, provides valuable insight into effective research practice and the factors involved in putting research findings to use.Leading with experience - narratives of six child welfare case studies from the UK, Ireland, Israel, South Africa, and the US - the book frames those cases in the context of relevant literatures to build up a cross-case analysis that distills lessons, throws enduring questions into relief, and lays a foundation for informing future practice. It mines the cross-national experience to develop perspective for a better understanding of the importance of different policy and cultural environments, while nonetheless emphasizing issues that are applicable across borders. The ground prepared by the case studies allows the volume to tease out themes and lessons, placing the empirical findings against relevant theoretical frameworks and developing guidelines for improving research practice in this arena.Researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and advocates concerned with promoting effective policy and practice will find this book a vital aid in understanding how to apply knowledge to the real world and bring about in ways that can inform and contribute to social change.