Screening potential adoptive and foster parents is an extremely difficult task, yet many social workers who screen applicants and supervise placements have no written guide to aid in their decision making or to measure competency of technique.
How To Screen Adoptive and Foster Parents: A Workbook for Professionals and Students serves as a comprehensive guide for social workers to draw on when making decisions for foster care/adoption placement. Based on case histories, research data, and interpretive analysis, this workbook teaches specific interview skills and analytical decision-making techniques necessary to competently evaluate each unique applicant family within a variety of constructs.
Comprising 12 concise and well-researched chapters, this guide is ideal for both classroom discussions and real-life applications. Topics include:
- What should you know before beginning a screening interview?
- What are the warning signs that an applicant may be a child predator?
- What are the steps to conducting a thorough home study?
- When is psychological consultation warranted?
Social workers and other professions dealing with the placement of children in foster and adoptive care have an enormous responsibility as their decisions and recommendations have lifelong consequences on both the children concerned as well as for the families in which the children are placed.
Although written in the context of the USA child care and protection system, the book has much to offer professional social workers working in other countries who are involved in assessing families for the placement and care of children.
Joan van Niekerk
Manager, Training and Advocacy, Childline South Africa
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