A Guidebook for Raising Foster Children

Writtenby a pediatrician, with the help of many foster parents, this book contains practical suggestions for those who care for foster children. It provides guidance to maximize the experience for foster families and assist them in the process. Dr. Blatt addresses many of the major and minor problems that may arise in foster care.


Author: Susan McNair Blatt, M.D.
Publisher: Bergin Garvey, 2000
Format: Book, hardcover, 219 pages
Can This Child Be Saved?

Solutions for Adoptive Foster Families

It offers parents help and hope, encouragement, and support. It examines what causes children to act and react the way they do, and why conventional strategies and approaches often fail to reach them. It explores and validates parents' techniques and therapeutic approaches that do succeed with disturbed children.


Author: Foster Cline, M.D. Cathy Helding
Publisher: World Enterprises, 1999
Format: Book, paperback, 309 pages
Developing Family Resources

Developing Family Resources isa 35-minute staff training video that demonstrates family assessment strategies and how to incorporate family assessment into pre-service training.


Publisher: Child Welfare League of America, 1997
Format: Video, 35 minutes
Facilitating Developmental Attachment
The Road to Emotional Recovery and Behavioral Change in Foster Adopted Children

This book shows how to work successfully with emotional and behavioral problems rooted in deficient early attachments. In particular, it addresses the emotional difficulties of many of the foster and adopted children living in our country who are unable to form secure attachments. Traditional interventions, which do not teach parents how to successfully engage the child, frequently do not provide the means by which the seriously damaged child can form the secure attachment that underlies behavioral change. Dr. Daniel Hughes maps out a treatment plan designed to help the child begin to experience and accept, from both the therapist and the parents, affective attunement that he or she should have received in the first few years of life.

Hughes' approach includes:  
  • Using foster and adopted parents as co-therapists
  • Teaching differentiation between old and new parents
  • Overcoming the perception of discipline as abusive
  • Framing misbehavior, discipline, conflicts, and parental authority as important aspects of a child's learning to trust.

All children, at the core of their beings, need to be attached to someone who considers them to be very special and who is committed to providing for their ongoing care. Children who lose their birth parents desperately need such a relationship if they are to heal and grow. This book shows therapists how to facilitate this crucial bond.


Author: Daniel A. Hughes, Ph.D.
Publisher: A Jason Aronson Book, 1997
Format: Book, paperback, 251 pages

First Steps in Parenting the Child Who Hurts

Tiddlers Toddlers

Primarily aimed at adoptive parents, but of considerable use to foster carers of young children, this publication approaches attachment and developmental issues arising when even the smallest child is in your care. Extremely well researched, it offers practical, sensitive guidance through the dark areas of separation, loss and trauma in early childhood. It reassures that no problem faced as a result of your child's early experiences is insignificant or undeserving of a solution. Neither is the reader patronized by assumptions that some matters should already be common knowledge. Archer sets out purposefully to encourage confidence and thereby to enable enjoyment of the young life in your care, confessing this to be the book she herself would have welcomed 20 years ago.


Author: Caroline Archer; Forward by Dr. Vera Fahlberg
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1999
Format: Book, paperback, 107 pages
Foster Care Solutions

Learning to Problem Solve
 
In Part One of this video, foster parents are shown a practical five-step technique for solving difficult child behavior problems.

In Part Two, a panel of foster parents practice applying the method in situations dealing with stealing, sexual activity, gangs, and running away.

Viewers learn to:
  • Identify the problem
  • List solutions
  • Weigh the pros and cons of each solution
  • Choose a solution
  • Put the solution into practice, then improve upon it.

Viewer's Manual offers discussion of the problem-solving process and exercises for foster parents.


Publisher: Northwest Media, 1995
Format: Video, 58 minutes, Viewer's Manual

Foster Care Solutions

Practical Tools for Foster Parents

Focuses on building relationships with children, teaching them skills, and empowering them by teaching self-discipline and self-control. Includes creating a safe environment, learning how to handle "blow-ups," and handling transitions when a foster child moves to another placement or returns home.


Editors: Temple-Plotz, Stricklett, Baker, Sterba
Publisher: Boys Town Press, 2002
Format: Book, paperback, 296 pages
Foster Youth Rights

A Foster Kinship Care Education training program on Foster Youth Rights, created by the Lake Tahoe Community College.


Produced by: Lake Tahoe Community College FKCE Program
Format: DVD and CD - Training includes a Power Point presentation, video and interviews with foster youth advocates.
LAPP Legal Toolkit Series

The Legal Advocates for Permanent Parenting has developed the following pamphlets for California Caregivers and their Partners:  
  • Important New Laws for California Foster Parents, Kinship Caregivers, and Adoptive Families: Effective January 1, 2004; Effective January 1, 2005; and Effective January 1, 2006
  • Allegations of Maltreatment against California Foster Caregivers
  • Communicating Concerns about a California Foster Child in Your Care
  • Court Participation Basics for California Foster and Kinship Parents
  • De Facto Parent Status for California Foster and Kinship Parents
  • Permanency for California Children in Foster Care
  • Personal Rights of Foster Children and Youth in California's Foster Care System
  • Prudent Parent Decision Making for California Foster and Kinship Parents
  • The Role of the Child's Attorney in California Juvenile Dependency Cases
  • Your California Foster Child's Sibling Relationships


Published by: Legal Advocates for Permanent Parenting, copyrighted 2006
Format: Booklets, 11 to 18 pages each

Making Cultural Connections

Hair and Skin Care for Children of African Descent

This down-to-earth, practical guide to the unique hair and skin care needs of children of African heritage is specifically writtern for foster and adoptive families whomay not be of Caribbean or African descent themselves, but who are caring for children who are.

Making Cultural Connections approaches hair and skin care from the perspective of promoting the child's cultural identity and stresses open communication between caregiver and child.

Issues addressed include: Normal hair maintenance; How to avoid hair damage and how to care for damaged hair; Hairstyles for children and teens; Normal skin care; and Skin conditions, both benign and potentially harmful, that are common in people with darker skin.


Author: Jeanne M. Costa
Publisher: CWLA Press, 2003
Format: Booklet, 22 pages
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