Mary Ellen Cox

Foster Parents’ Perceptions of Factors that Promote or Inhibit Successful Fostering:

Foster parents’ perceptions of familial and parental factors that promote or inhibit successful fostering were examined using semi-structured interviews. Characteristics that facilitate successful fostering include faith or support from church, a deep concern for children, tolerance, a strong cooperative marriage in married foster families, and a daily life that is characterized as organized and routinized but flexible in terms of responding to children’s needs and external demands. Characteristics that inhibit successful fostering include non-child-centered fostering motivations, competing demands for parents’ time and energy, parents’ difficulties in dealing with strong attachments to children who might have to leave the family, and personal and interpersonal inflexibility. The findings from this study highlight the need for foster parents to be skilled at creating family patterns that are characterized by clear, consistent routines and expectations as well as flexibility and tolerance. This dialectic pattern of family functioning should be a primary focus during training for foster parent applicants.

Willingness to Foster Children with Emotional or Behavioral Problems

ABSTRACT There is a large and growing number of children in family foster care with emotional or behavioral problems, but fewer families are willing to foster such children. We know virtually nothing about families who are willing to foster such children. This longitudinal study of 142 foster family applicants found that most families were at least willing to discuss fostering children with most kinds of problems. Children who set fires, behave destructively, or act out sexually were the least acceptable. In general, families with more resources were more willing to foster children with emotional or behavioral problems. Also, families who were more willing to foster such children were more likely to have children placed fourteen months after pre-service training. These results have important implications for recruiting, training, and providing support and services to foster families.

Measuring Foster Parent Potential: Casey Foster Parent Inventory-Applicant Version:

Objective: The Casey Foster Applicant Inventory-Applicant Version (CFAI-A) is a new standardized self-report measure designed to assess the potential to foster parent successfully. The CFAI-A is described, and results concerning its psychometric properties are presented. Method: Data from a sample of 304 foster mothers from 35 states are analyzed. Results: Six CFAI-A subscales were identified, and internal consistency reliability for these subscales ranged from .64 to .95. The construct validity of all but one of these subscales is promising. Conclusions: The CFAI-A shows promise for use in research and practice, where it might be used to improve decisions about how to support, monitor, and retain foster families and to match, place, and maintain foster children with foster families.

The Person-in-Environment Perspective in Social Work Journals: A Computer-Assisted Content Analysis

Abstract Disagreement over the meaning, utility, and implementation of the person-in-environment (p-i-e) perspective represents social works efforts to continually redefine itself in a dynamic world. The choice of a guiding perspective is significant, particularly in this era in which concern about the interdependence of global social, economic, and environmental systems is growing. Much of the debate about the p-i-e has taken place in social work journals. This article provides an empirical assessment of how social work scholars have interpreted and applied p-i-e related concepts in social work journals, through the use of a computer-assisted content analysis of all article abstracts in core journals reviewed in Social Work Abstracts (SWA) from 1987 to 1996.

The Foster Parent Potential Scale

Objective: A new measure of the potential of foster family applicants to provide quality family foster care is described and field tested in this study. The measure is titled the Foster Parent Potential Scale (FPPS). Method: Prospective data from 105 foster applicant families are analyzed. Results: Results support the internal consistency reliability of the FPPS, and for the most part its predictive, convergent, and discriminant validity. The notable exception to these results is that applicants of African American and other races had higher scores than did European American applicants, although the effect of race was small. Conclusions: The internal consistency reliability and construct validity of the FPPS is supported by these findings. The measure has several potentially useful applications.