Screening Adoptive and Foster Parents

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.

Screening Adoptive and Foster Parents, written by a former private and public agency social worker, who has placed hundreds of children into adoptive and foster homes, and a 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 among applicants

- adoptive and foster parent issues

- interview techniques

- writing home studies

- screening for male child predators

- child development, the stages

- understanding the Foster Parent Syndrome

- 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.

James L. Dickerson, a former public and private agency social worker in charge of screening adoptive and foster parent applicants, and a case manager for the Mississippi Department of Mental Health in the area of intellectual disabilities. He developed a landmark mentoring program for adults with intellectual disabilities and wrote a grant that obtained federal funding for the program. He is the co-author of How to Screen Adoptive and Foster Parents: A Workbook for Professionals and Students and Basics of Adoption. He is an award-winning author of numerous books, most of them in the category of investigative journalism and biography. His investigative biography of Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley's manager, was purchased by Warner Bros. for a 2022 film titled Elvis, starring Tom Hanks and Austin Butler. He currently is working on scripts for a television series.

Mardi Allen, Ph.D. is the former Clinical Services Liaison with Mississippi Department of Mental Health and past president of the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (2002-2003). She is co-author of several books, including How to Screen Adoptive and Foster Parents: A Workbook for Professionals and Students, published by the National Association of Social Workers, and Basics of Adoption. She earned her doctorate in psychology at the University of Southern Mississippi with an emphasis in Child, Developmental and School Psychology. She has been a book reviewer for Contemporary Psychology, a journal published by the American Psychological Association, and she has been published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology.