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Foster family applicants form the pool from which caregivers are selected for 75% of the 568,000 children in foster care. These families make up a critical national resource that is in short supply, but we know very little about them. This lack of knowledge limits our understanding of how best to recruit, assess, train, and support foster families.
It has been known for many years that what is needed to assess foster family applicants are standardized measures that are valid and reliable, but those measures do not exist. This is a remarkable gap in our knowledge given the millions of vulnerable children placed in family foster care over the last century. To meet this need our research team working in collaboration with Casey Family Programs has developed and tested two foster parent assessment tools, the Casey Home Assessment Protocol (CHAP) and the Casey Foster Applicant Inventory (CFAI). More information about obtaining these tools can be found on the Foster Parent Assessment Tools page. Many agencies have been involved in testing these tools. We are continuing to test these tools. Agencies interested in participating in testing these tools should contact Kelly Sim (ksim@casey.org ) or John G. Orme (jorme@utk.edu).
More generally, our team is committed to conducting interdisciplinary practice-relevant foster family research that can be used to promote the safety, permanence, and well-being of children placed with foster families. This research is supported by Casey Family Programs, and was previously supported by the National Institutes of Mental Health through the Children's Mental Health Services Research Center . It includes examinations of the:
- recruitment of foster families
- foster family characteristics and behavioral and emotional problems of foster children
- assessment of foster family applicants and the relationships between such characteristics and the selection and retention of foster families;
- role perceptions of foster family applicants and foster family workers
- factors that promote or inhibit effective fostering
- characteristics of foster parents willing to foster special needs children and the relationship of such willingness to foster family utilization
- training and services for kinship and non-kinship foster families
- causes and correlates of placement instability; and
- long-term outcomes of family foster care.
For more information about our research, please read the Foster Family Forum, a newsletter about our research (Issue #1 and Issue #2 and Issue #3 and Issue #4). Copies of all our team research papers are available on the Papers page.
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