RE:

["Monique Simone" <monique.simone@xxxxxxx>]

I'm sending this on behalf of Lisa Jones, a colleague, who can't access the
server right now:



I and some colleagues at Casey Family Services have just completed a draft
of a review of foster parent research that relates to better understanding
quality foster parenting and foster parent recruitment and retention issues.
While summarizing the findings of this literature, we primarily focused on
topical and methodological gaps in the current body of research and made
recommendations for the direction of future research efforts.  Many of your
questions remain unanswered, empirically anyways.  
If you are interested, I would be happy to send out a copy of the review
once it is completed. Just let me know.  We are involved now in planning a
foster parent research project that we hope will help answer some of these
questions.

Also, a group out at the University of Tennessee has done a good deal of
work in this area.  See their website
at-http://utcmhsrc.csw.utk.edu/caseyproject/


Lisa M. Jones, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor, Psychology
Crimes Against Children Research Center
126 Horton SSCtr.
University of New Hampshire
Durham, NH 03824
(603) 862-2515
(603) 862-1212 (fax)
lisa.jones@xxxxxxx 
www.unh.edu/ccrc/ 

-----Original Message-----
From: Gordon Elliott [mailto:gordon.elliott@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2002 11:00 AM
To: Child Maltreatment Researchers
Subject: 


      We were thinking and THAT can be dangerous....is there anything out 
there which says why Foster Parents continue to be Foster Parents, 
considering the stresses, bad placements, etc they experience??  What 
characteristics would an agency/organization have or need to have , which 
would "encourage" retention of Foster Parents??  Would Certification of 
FP's work??  Would extra training beyond required work?? Would offering an 
Assoc Arts degree work??  I there anything about FP characteristics which 
might develop a better foster care experience for their Foster Children?? 
What do they need personally to provide the best care??  I know this may be 
a bunch to ask, but we hope to learn what the literature says about these 
topics and maybe add to it!!    Thanks ,  Gordon