Assessing the Long-Term Effects of Foster Care: A Research Synthesis [Paperback]

Thomas P. McDonald (Author), Alex Westerfelt (Author), Irving Piliavin (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: CWLA Press (Child Welfare League of America) (January 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0878686037
• ISBN-13: 978-0878686032
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,935,441 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars what matters when you're a foster parent, May 5, 2009

By 

Renee J. Wallis "Foster-to-Adopt Parent" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Assessing the Long-Term Effects of Foster Care: A Research Synthesis (Paperback)

As I tried to sort through what matters when raising a foster child, this book is one of the few research summaries I found. I am not a researcher, so I only read the summaries/results. It is not written for the lay reader; and I am a lay reader.

I was sad that foster kids don't do so well as a group, and relieved that there are good individual results for some children.

Here are two tidbits that I found interesting as I formulate my strategy in coping with the chaos that is foster care:

Like everywhere else in our socieity, socio-econmic security increases the chances for better outcomes, which makes sense as foster kids need a lot of support and resources. Prevailing wisdom is that kinship matters most (current policy is to place the child with a family member as the first priority). Of course, if we placed the child with a kinship family and invested in getting them the resources they needed, the results might be very different.

Birth family contact in one study did not improve well-being outcomes. Again, the prevailing wisdom is that birth family contact matters a lot. And, again, the whole birth family contact thing is poorly understood and poorly handled; so while this is interesting in the here and now as parents try to make decisions, the results may have little meaning when considering how to set up a system that is in the best interest of the child.

Keep muddlng thorugh foster families! While we may want a list of "this works better" it isn't yet available.