Greeno, Elizabeth, Bethany Lee, Mathew Uretsky, Jessica Moore, Richard Barth, Terry Shaw.

Effects of a Foster Parent Training Intervention on Child Behavior, Caregiver Stress, and

Parenting Style. New York: Springer -Science, 2015. Website.

Summary: In their report, Greeno and her partners go in-depth about how important the training of a foster parent is. They write about how the majority of children in foster care have experienced some kind of trauma or abuse and have resulting emotional disorders. Due to those issues, some foster children are more difficult to care for due to behavioral issues. When these kind of behavioral issues get out of control, the kids are removed and placed in a different home, but the issue was never addresses leading to a repeat of the same situation. Greeno and her colleges also wrote about the KEEP program and the success it has had in various counties with behavioral issues.

Quality: Greeno and her co-workers put together a lot of information about the effects of proper foster parent training and I found it very helpful to my research on training in Fairfax County. Overall, the paper was very helpful and detailed.

Issues:  I found this paper to be a little hard to follow sometimes. While the writers go into great detail, I thought the topic bounced back and forth too many times. Overall it was a good resource. 

Chamberlin, Patricia. "KEEP Program." Child Trends. Child Trends, June 4, 2014. Website. Nov. 24,
2017.

Summary: The KEEP program is a supplemental training program aimed towards foster parents with elementary aged kids. This program is meant to provide extra training involving behavior management and parenting practices. The program focuses on positive reinforcement, effective praise, and proper discipline. This website not only explains the program, it also has the details of different studies completed on families who have been through the KEEP program. The studies provide proof that this program has been effective in the lives of foster parents and children.

Quality: I found that the website was very clear with any definitions, and with the way the studies were resented. It's a very well organized page and I could also find the contact information for the author of this article. The author was also one of the evaluaters of the program. She went on interviews with the foster families who had completed the KEEP training and talked about the improvement shown among the families who participated.

Issues: Personally, I have no issues with the source.

Key Words/Phrases:  KEEP, foster child, behavior, positive reinforcement, effective praise, child well-being

Source:

Felder, Claudia. Interview. All Things Considered. NPR. WAMU, D.C., 22 Sept. 2013. Radio.

Summary: In an interview with NPR’s Arun Rath, a former foster child (Claudia Felder) talks about her experience as a child raised in foster care. She was moved around to five different foster homes before she was seven years old. When she was ten, the family that adopted her decided they no longer wanted her, so they gave her back to the state, but they kept her baby sister and did not allow the girls to see each other. Claudia did not find a permanent home until she was a teenager. They also talk about some of the problems with the foster system and how they affected Claudia’s time in the system.

Quality: This source was one of the most interesting ones I found and I found it most helpful because it’s first hand information. No one sat and tried to create an image if what foster care is like with nothing but research to guide them. The other thing that I liked a lot about this interview is that everything Claudia is saying gives validation to my experience in foster care.

Issues: The only issue I had was how during the interview, someone else would interject and then they would be introduced by the interviewer rather than being introduced first.

Key Words/Phrases: adoption, foster care, social worker

Ahmann, Elizabeth, Deborah Dokken. “Supporting Youth Aging Out of Foster Care” Pediatric

Nursing Vol. 43 No. 1 (2017): CINAHL Complete. Web. October 18, 2017.

Summary: Ahmann and Dokken outline different issues that young adults find when they age out of foster care, including lack of adequate health care, behavioral issues, lack of education (either no high school degree or not being able to go to college), financial issues, early pregnancies and other problems. The rest of the article goes in depth and defines the issues, gives evidence that the issues are very prevalent, and at the end, provides some ideas for bettering the lives of former foster children. One of the most prevalent issues, which leads to other issues, is the lack of healthy adult relationships in a foster child’s life. Ahmann and Dokken make it very clear that having an adult role model, someone trustworthy or an advocate to go to is extremely important for kids who have had their lives disrupted. Even one caring adult can change a child’s life.

Quality: This research paper is a laundry list of the things that happen to foster kids who slip through the cracks. The writers used specific details about what happens after foster care, focusing on the kids who never got a happily ever after. Deborah and Elizabeth revealed the gross truth about kids who may have been perfectly fine in foster care, but are now living on the streets or dealing drugs to get by. I found the paper extremely detailed and in my personal experience, very accurate. I think the stress they put on the importance of adult relationships was particularly important. Having an adult to rely on can make the so much of a difference in a child’s life.

Issues: I didn’t have very many issues with the source, it described the faults in the program very well. What I think the writers could have done to make it more informative was maybe interview former foster kids who face the struggles outlined in the report. It’s one thing to read facts and statistics about what could happen, but it is so much more moving to hear from the teenagers it actually happened to.

Key Words/Phrases: Runaway, Child welfare, Foster care, Elopement, AWOL, Functional assessment

First Post

White, Kevin R. “Placement Discontinuity for Older Children and Adolescents Who Exit Foster

Care Through Adoption Or Guardianship: A Systematic Review”. Child and Adolescent

Social Work Journal 33.4 (2015): 377-394 PSYCInfo. Web. 13 October 2017.

Summary: In this source, White looks deep into the American foster care system and how it works when and older child or a child with special needs has to be placed into a permanent home after unionization is no longer a viable option for the family. He includes legislation written in the last ten years, incentives put in place for states to find homes rather than leave kids in foster care until the “age out” (become adults). There is the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act of 2014 demanded that states regularly look for permanency options for foster children. The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act gave incentives for states to find adoptive homes for older kids and kids with special needs, including more assistance finding those homes, and expanded the availability of subsidized guardianship payments for relatives providing more children with homes.

Quality: This source had a lot of good information about the different legislation regarding children under the care of the state. White was very thorough in his research and he is a respected professor of social work at East Carolina University. Throughout his paper, White used specific examples whenever he made a statement. For example when he spoke of recent legislation that would improve child permanency, he mentioned the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act of 2014, the  Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, and statistics regarding the number of foster children being adopted in 1998 and 2008. Each time White introduces a key word or phrase he gives a detailed definition for the reader.

Key Words/Phrases:  Adoption, foster care, guardianship, discontinuity, child welfare, permanency