Download or read book Well functioning Families for Adoptive and Foster Children written by Joyce S. Cohen and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 1990-12-15 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The increase in adoption and fostering of children with special needs has been one of the most positive developments in Canadian child welfare over the past fifteen years. But special-needs children place greater demands on the adopting or fostering families, and this in turn has led to increased disruption of placements. This book will help child welfare professionals and students to assess situations so that disruption can be minimized. It evolved from a clinical analysis which compared the characteristics of families who adopted and successfully maintained a special-needs child with families who tried without success. From this clinical analysis, the authors developed a unique training program for adoption/foster workers which is organized in four modules: family assessment, child assessment, matching, and maintenance. They outline in detail the training program and the findings of the ensuing research project based on implementation of the program. They also present a number of remarkable, yet representative, case studies to which theoretical concepts are applied, along with a set of practical professional tools to aid child welfare workers in assessment and planning. A survey of the relevant literature and an overview of child welfare organization are included. This timely and innovative manual fills a gap in the child welfare literature. It provides a much-needed guide to the assessment and matching of children with adoptive and foster families, and to the maintenance and support of those families.

Download or read book Family Foster Care in the Next Century written by Kathy Barbell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-01-18 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Family foster care is supposed to provide temporary protection and nurturing for children experiencing maltreatment. Although it has long been a critical service for millions of children in the United States, the increased attention given to this service in the last two decades has focused more on its inability to achieve its intended outcomes than on its successes. However, as social and political trends and new legislation reshape child welfare, policymakers and service providers continue to offer innovative policy and practice options for this child welfare service. Though use of the service has changed, family foster care remains important. Responding to a widespread sense of the "drifting" of children in care, Congress passed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980. This legislation became a key factor shaping the current status of family foster care. Its goal was to reduce reliance on out-of-home care and encourage use of preventive and reunification services; it also mandated that agencies engage in planning efforts for permanent solutions for foster children. Yet, despite federal mandates and funding, the child welfare system has continued to struggle to provide the level of services needed for children to reduce the amount of time children remain in temporary foster care. The latest response to these problems, the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, established unequivocally that safety, permanency, and well-being were national goals for children in the child welfare system. To comply with the law, public and private agencies are required to initiate significant program and practice changes in the coming years to improve permanency outcomes and child well-being in family foster care. The central theme of the volume is accountability for outcomes, certainly a current driving force in child welfare as well as in other public and private service fields. This volume will be of interest to all concerned with the social welfare of children and families at the end of the twentieth century. Kathy Barbell is director of Foster Care of the Child Welfare League of America, Washington, DC. Lois Wright is assistant dean at the College of Social Work, University of South Carolina, Columbia.

Download or read book How to Reduce the Risk Healthy Functioning Families for Adoptive and Foster Children written by Cohen, Joyce S and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Replanted written by Jenn Ranter Hook and published by Templeton Foundation Press. This book was released on 2019-01-07 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many people embark on the journey of adoption and foster care but are unprepared for the challenges that await them along the way. Replanted takes an honest look at the joys and hardships that come with choosing this journey and provides a model of faith-based support made up of three parts to help families thrive: Soil, Sunlight, and Water. Soil, or emotional support, addresses the need for grace-filled settings where families can connect with other families who understand their experience. Sunlight, or informational support, focuses on obtaining helpful training to raise children who may have unique needs or challenges. Water, or tangible support, deals with concrete resources such as medical care, child care, and financial support. Throughout the book, the Replanted model is brought to life by stories and examples based on the clinical work and personal experiences of the authors. Their candid insight will serve families who are actively involved in adoption or foster care, as well as people who are eager to help support those families. Replanted affirms that with the right support system in place, parents can answer this sacred call not only with open hearts but also with their eyes wide open.

Download or read book Foster the Family written by Jamie C. Finn and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are great rewards that come along with being a foster parent, yet there are also great challenges that can leave you feeling depleted, alone, and discouraged. The many burdens of a foster parent's day--hurting children, struggling biological parents, and a broken system--are only compounded by the many burdens of a foster parent's heart--confusion, anxiety, heartache, anger, and fear. With the compassion and insight of a fellow foster parent, Jamie C. Finn helps you see your struggles through the lens of the gospel, bringing biblical truths to bear on your unique everyday realities. In these short, easy-to-read chapters, you'll find honest, personal stories and practical lessons that provide encouragement and direction from God's Word as you walk the journey of foster parenting.

Download or read book Fostering Good Relationships written by Miriam Richardson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-16 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the importance of effective multi-agency and multi-disciplinary partnership work for the mental health of children and young people in care and adoption. It takes an overall systemic perspective, but the co-authors contribute different theoretical approaches. It focuses on practice, showing how practitioners can draw on their varied theoretical approaches to enhance the way they work together and in partnership with carers and with professionals from other agencies. The book provides a context that looks at the needs of children and young people in the care and adoption systems, the overall importance for their mental health of joined up 'corporate parenting', and national and local approaches to this. It then moves to focus on practical ways of working therapeutically in partnership with others who contribute diverse skills and perspectives, using specific case examples. Additional chapters look at collaborative ways of working with key carers to enhance their therapeutic role. Finally, some of the main elements of partnership collaboration are explored, as well as the challenges of work across agencies and disciplines.

Download or read book Siblings in Adoption and Foster Care written by Deborah N. Silverstein and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2008-12-30 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Normally, our relationships with our brothers and sisters are the longest relationships in our lives, outlasting time with our parents, and most marriages today. The sibling relationship is emotionally powerful and critically important, giving us a sense of continuity throughout life. So what happens when a child loses contact not only with his or her parents, but with siblings too? That is what happens in thousands of cases each year inside the child welfare system. Children are surrendered by parents - or taken by the government - and placed in the foster care system. There, they are often separated and sent to different foster families, or adopted by different couples. In this work, a team of top experts details for us how this added separation futher traumatizes children. This stellar team of internationally known researchers - some of whom are themselves adoptees - shares with us hard, poignant, and personal insights, as well as ways we might act to solve this widespread problem. Contributors address not only the importance of nurturing sibling bonds and mental health strategies to support those relationships, but also the legal rights of siblings to be together, as well as issues in international adoptions. Emerging and standing programs to encourage and facilitate adoptions that keep siblings together are featured, as are programs that at least enable them to stay in contact.

Download or read book Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency written by Sharon Roszia and published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. This book was released on 2019-07-18 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on a hugely successful US model, the Seven Core Issues in Adoption is the first conceptual framework of its kind to offer a unifying lens that was inclusive of all individuals touched by the adoption experience. The Seven Core Issues are Loss, Rejection, Shame/Guilt, Grief, Identity, Intimacy, and Mastery/Control. The book expands the model to be inclusive of adoption and all forms of permanency: adoption, foster care, kinship care, donor insemination and surrogacy. Attachment and trauma are integrated with the Seven Core Issues model to address and normalize the additional tasks individuals and families will encounter. The book views the Seven Core Issues from a range of perspectives including: multi-racial, LGBTQ, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, African-American, International, openness, search and reunion, and others. This essential guide introduces each Core Issue, its impact on individuals, offering techniques for growth and healing.

Download or read book Brothers and Sisters in Adoption written by Arleta James and published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. This book was released on 2012-02-15 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What about the kids already there? How do they do when a child with a challenging past joins a family by adoption? When experienced parents decide to adopt an older child or a sibling group, they jump through all kinds of bureaucratic hoops â?? background checks, interviews, group meetings, reading assignments, classes, etc. But most often the typically developing children these adults are already parenting (whether through birth or adoption) are left out of the process, informed that a new kid is coming, and simply expected to â??adjustâ?? to the addition of another sibling. The addition of a child with a history of neglect or trauma cannot be a seamless transition. The expectations of everyone involved â?? parents, new siblings, and, yes, professionals facilitating the adoption â?? must be realistic, taking into account that the new child will need special attention that may take away time and attention from the already resident kids, that family life is likely to be turned topsy turvy until appropriate counseling and support are in place, that relationships will change. Therapist Arleta James is certainly not the first person to recognize this, but she is the first to do something about it. Brothers and Sisters in Adoption offers insights and examples and sturdy, practical, proven tools for helping newly configured families prepare, accept, react, and mobilize to become a new and different family meeting the practical, physical and emotional needs of all its members. These well prepared and supported families are the ones who thrive!

Download or read book Honestly Adoption written by Mike Berry and published by Harvest House Publishers. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover What Adoption and Foster Care Really Look Like If you are considering adoption or foster care or are already somewhere in this difficult and complicated process, you need trusted information from people who have been where you are. Mike and Kristin Berry have adopted eight children and cared for another 23 kids in their nine-year stint as foster parents. They aren’t just experts. They have experienced every emotional high and low and encountered virtually every situation imaginable as parents. Now, they want to share what they’ve learned with you. Get the answers you need to the following questions, and many more: Should I foster parent or adopt? How do I know? What is the first step in becoming an adoptive or foster parent? What are the benefits of an open versus closed adoption? How and when do I tell my child that he or she is adopted? How do I help my child embrace his or her cultural and racial identity? Honestly Adoption will provide you with practical, down-to-earth advice to make good decisions in your own adoption and foster parenting journey and give you the help and hope you need.

Download or read book Special Needs Adoptive Families written by Wendi K. Schweiger and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As a result of recent federal initiatives, more children have become available for adoption, and many of these children enter their new families with a variety of "special needs." Special needs adoptees have been defined as "children who have experienced physical or sexual abuse and/or severe neglect; children with physical or emotional disabilities; children who are older than one year; and children who are members of a sibling group who are placed together with the same adoptive family" (Mullin & Johnson, 1999, p. 590). Often, special needs adoptive children evidence psychological and emotional difficulties that can be very challenging to the adoptive family. These children and their families may require a number of services and different types of support to assist with the transition of integrating the adopted child into the family and to assist family members as they move through new developmental stages. In addition, parents' needs for support may vary based on the special needs of the adopted child and/or may vary based on their prior experiences (or lack of) as foster parents or adoptive parents. This study used Urie Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory (1977, 1988, 1989) as a framework to conceptualize the study of social supports in special needs adoptive families. An ecological perspective recognizes the role of the environment in familial development and recognizes that the family is a complex system that interacts with other complex systems. Differences in support availability, use, need, and helpfulness were examined based on 125 parents' reports. One-way ANOVAs revealed significant differences in support needs based on parent experience and special need categories of children. Parents with foster and/or adoptive experience reported higher availability of supports overall than parents without experience. Parents without foster or adoptive experience reported lower use and higher need of supports overall than parents with experience. Parents of children with physical/developmental disabilities reported higher use of services overall than parents of children with behavioral/emotional disabilities/difficulties or parents of children with both types of disabilities/difficulties. Significant correlations were found between support availability and the Family Environment Scale (FES) subscale of Conflict and support need and the FES subscale of Conflict, suggesting a relationship between family environment and supports."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.

Download or read book Wounded Children Healing Homes written by Jayne Schooler and published by Tyndale House. This book was released on 2014-02-27 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why doesn’t our child return our love? What are we failing to understand? What are we failing to do? These questions can fill the minds of adoptive parents caring for wounded, traumatized children. Families often enter into this experience with high expectations for their child and for themselves but are broadsided by shattered assumptions. This book addresses the reality of those unmet expectations and offers validation and solutions for the challenges of parenting deeply traumatized and emotionally disturbed children.

Download or read book Working with Adoptive Parents written by Virginia M. Brabender and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-05-15 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Practical techniques for guiding parents through the stages of adoption and beyond Editors Virginia Brabender and April Fallon are clinical psychologists and also adoptive parents whose families are acquainted with both the uncertainty and joy of adoption. In Working with Adoptive Parents, they offer an in-depth treatment of the distinctive needs, feelings, impulses, expectations, and conflicts that adoptive parents experience through the stages of adoption and beyond. This volume offers a comprehensive picture of adoption through an exploration of the experiences and developmental processes of the adoptive parent. Featuring contributions from mental health professionals whose careers have focused on work with families through the adoption process, this unique book: Covers the theory, research, and practice of adoptive parenting throughout the life cycle Explores the issues unique to the adoptive mother and adoptive father as they traverse the stages of parenting Offers a close look at families with special needs children Acknowledges and explores the great diversity among adoptive families and the kinship networks in which they are embedded Examines attachment issues between adoptive parent and child Providing a framework for therapists to conceptualize their work with adoptive parents, Working with Adoptive Parents clarifies and facilitates the journey that many of these families face.

Download or read book Accomplishing Permanency Reunification Pathways and Outcomes for Foster Children written by Elizabeth Fernandez and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-09-07 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reunification is a primary goal of foster care systems and the most common permanency planning decision. It is defined as the return of children placed in protective care to the home of their birth family and used to describe the act of restoring a child in out-of-home care back to the biological family. Yet reunification decision-making and the process of reintegrating children into birth families remains under researched. This Brief takes a look at family reunification knowledge and research in Australia where there is evidence that most children placed in protective care are eventually reunited with their birth parents. It explores how a knowledge of reunification decision making and outcomes can contribute to strengthening practice and informing policy formulation and program planning in Child Welfare.​

Download or read book One Heart at a Time written by Delilah and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “You’re listening to Delilah.” Delilah, the most listened-to woman on American radio, has distinguished herself as the “Queen of Sappy Love Songs” and America’s ultimate romance guru. But Delilah’s life off-air is all the more extraordinary—a life full of trials, forgiveness, faith, and adventure. In One Heart at a Time, Delilah’s heartfelt account of her own story reveals what shaped the voice that 9 million listeners know and love. Today, Delilah is the founder of an NGO called Point Hope, the owner of a 55-acre working farm, and an inductee of the National Radio Hall of Fame. But to achieve this, she often had to pave her own way. Disowned by her father, divorced, and fired from a dozen jobs over the years, Delilah pushed forward through family addiction and devastating loss, through glass ceilings and red tape. Her consistent goal to help those in need took her everywhere from the streets of Philadelphia to refugee camps in Ghana. Along the way, Delilah was blessed by thirteen children—ten of them adopted. Though many of them contend with special needs and the forever effects of a broken foster care system, her children have been able to transform their own remarkable lessons into guiding lights for other kids in need. Just as Delilah has done. One Heart at a Time exposes the real woman behind the microphone. In her easy-going style and characteristic, beloved voice, Delilah tells her deeply moving life story as the series of miracles it is.

Download or read book Prediction in Child Development written by Janet L. Hoopes and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Children in Foster Care and Adoption written by John T. Pardeck and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1998-10-28 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bibliotherapy is a new and creative approach for helping children deal with both small problems and major life crises, such as placement in substitute care. Bibliotherapy literally means treatment through books. It is a process of intervention that involves the child as well as the helping person. Bibliotherapy is an approach that helps children through reading to more clearly understand the problems facing them and to develop solutions for solving problems. Bibliotherapy is particularly useful for children placed in foster care or adoption because it can be implemented by all helping persons working with the child welfare system. These persons include foster and adoptive parents, biological parents, teachers, psychologists, social workers, clergy, and librarians.