Well-functioning Families for Adoptive and Foster Children: A Handbook for Child Welfare Workers

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.

Joyce S. Cohen is a professor emeritus of the Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto.

Anne Westhues is a professor in the Faculty of the Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University.