About the Book
Assessing prospective adoptive and foster parents is an extremely complex task, and one that happens within a pressurised time frame.
Currently, assessments draw substantially on interviews with prospective adopters and foster carers. Too often, they generate a lot of information but lack meaningful analysis and understanding of parenting capacity. Children with histories of trauma, loss and hurt need to join families in which parents exhibit the ability to be good at relationships, able to manage their own stress and bond with the child in their care. In this book, leading experts including Dan Hughes, Jonathan Baylin, Kim Golding and Julie Selwyn combine the latest findings from neuroscience with research on what makes good assessments. Together, they provide guidance and recommend tools for making thorough, analytical and effective assessments which will ensure the best possible chance of placement success.
Assessing Adoptive and Foster Parents is an invaluable source of knowledge and practice guidance for social workers undertaking assessments of parenting capacity of children who have experienced neglect or trauma.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Introduction, Joanne Alper, Adoptionplus. Chapter 2: Why are you frightened of being parented? Understanding developmental trauma, Kim S. Golding, Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust. Chapter 3: The home study and assessment of applicants: research evidence, Julie Selwyn, University of Bristol. Chapter 4: Adoptionplus: a new agency, a new approach, Joanne Alper, Adoptionplus. Chapter 5: Parenting well and staying well: understanding the qualities needed for parenting children with developmental trauma, Kim S. Golding and Ben Gurney-Smith, Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust and Adoptionplus. Chapter 6: Understanding developmental trauma, parental attachments, caregiving and PACE, Dan Hughes, Quittie GlenCenter for Mental Health. Chapter 7: The parenting brain, John Baylin, Norman Broudy MD & Associates. Chapter 8: Reflective functioning and parenting, John Baylin, Norman Broudy MD & Associates. Chapter 9: Conclusion, David Howe, University of East Anglia.
About the Author :
Kim S. Golding CBE, BSc, MSc, D. Clin. Psy. AFBPsS is a clinical psychologist who works in Worcestershire, England where she was influential in the founding of the Integrated Service for Looked After Children - a multi-agency, holistic service providing support for foster, adoptive and residential parents, schools and the range of professionals supporting children growing up in care or in adoptive families. Kim was trained and mentored by Dan Hughes in the use of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP). She was formerly on the board of the Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy Institute supporting the use of DDP in Europe, USA and Canada. She accredits and trains professionals in the approach and has been invited to speak about this work internationally. Daniel A. Hughes is a psychologist who specializes in working with children and young people with trauma/attachment problems and their families. He developed Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, a key feature of which is the parenting attitude of PACE, and Attachment Focused Family Therapy. He is the President of the Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy Institute, Pennsylvania, USA. He is author of several books including Building the Bonds of Attachment, 2nd edition, and Attachment Focused Family Therapy Workbook.
Review :
Assessing Adoptive and Foster Parents is a fantastic, practical and easy-to-read resource for social workers in adoption and fostering services. It brings together the most influential academics; translating theory into practice for busy social workers charged with finding families for our most vulnerable children.
Assessing Adoptive and Foster Parents sheds light on some of the dilemmas social workers face in assessing suitability of carers/adopters and helps deepen their understanding of the process of assessment and analysis by focussing on some of the key skills needed.
It delves into the two-way relationship between assessors and foster carers/prospective adopters, the power dynamics and how reflective functioning can be improved with practice. It also provides the assessing social worker with examples of the kinds of questions to ask in order to assess suitability and parenting potential of applicants and how the answers can then be analysed.
This book is one that must be read by anyone undertaking adoption and fostering assessments as it offers valuable knowledge, guidance and direction on how to understand and achieve analysis within assessments. A highly recommended book!
A visit some years ago to Adoptionplus and discussions with Joanne Alper helped open my layman's eyes to the challenge of adopting older children, children much more likely to have experienced considerable neglect. This book examines the way we assess adopters to ensure we recruit those who, however naive they might have been when first considering adoption, have the necessary qualities to succeed in raising a child damaged by the neglect of those from whom love and stability was expected. We know that those qualities - according to Rushton - include warmth, consistency, flexibility, tenacity and a sense of humour. The challenge is how to identify those characteristics and move away from a parental assessment process which has sometimes been both extremely time consuming and yet superficial and sometimes arbitrary.
But this book is also a reminder that adopters, however rich they are in the qualities which are needed, must have support. The pioneering Adoptionplus model which guarantees access to therapeutic support until the adopted child is eighteen must become the dominant adoption model in England. In the past too many courageous adopters of traumatised children have struggled, often been left isolated, and sometimes been themselves criticised for their failure as parents when, in truth, the challenges facing them would have overwhelmed most of us.
I warmly recommend this collection of illuminating essays.
There could not be any more significant professional task than to assess and then make a prediction of what is likely to happen if prospective carers are approved and then have a child or children placed with them. As this book makes clear, it is part art and to a limited sense science...Each one of these chapters discusses in considerable detail what the current state of play is both for the art and the science of assessment.
This fascinating book makes an important contribution to our understanding of the effects of development and trauma in potential adoptive parenting relationships, and describes how, and why, we need to use this understanding to inform the assessment process of those wanting to adopt.
