Troubled Transplants: Unconventional Strategies for Helping Disturbed Foster and Adopted Children

Caring for troubled adoptive/foster care children can be both harrowing and heroic. Many of today's foster and adopted children come from backgrounds where they experience not only the loss of previous caregivers, but have also suffered from abuse, sexual exploitation, or neglect. Individuals who invite these children into their homes often find themselves in a therapeutic role that can tax and exhaust. Troubled Transplants focuses on these children, their backgrounds, and their deleterious impact on the interaction and environment with the foster or adoptive family. The authors provide suggestions about behavioral roots and practical strategies to address and improve these issues.

Richard Delaney is a psychologist who has worked with foster, kinship, and adoptive parents over the past thirty years. He is a consultant to private and public foster and adoptive agencies. Delaney is a father and stepfather living in Colorado.

Frank Kunstal is a psychologist with broad experience in evaluation and treatment of seriously disturbed children and families. He is a consultant to social welfare agencies, school districts, correctional facilities, and the court systems.