Books:

Lanchon, Anne, All About Adoption: How to Deal With the Questions of Your Past, Harry N Abrams Publishers, 2006 Adopted children can gain some supportive advice through personal testimonials and illustrations shared in this book. The book provides children with strategies for facing  various questions and concerns they might have about their infancy and birth history.

Little field, Jamie, Make a life book for a child in foster care. In

http://charityguide.org/volunteer/fewhours/foster-care.htm

Littlefield, the senior editor for Children’s Issues describes a program for matching volunteers with foster care recipients. The volunteer’s task is to create a foster care memory book, called a lifebook. The book is created with the foster child and family and can include pictures and stories about important events and people in the child’s life.  Life books can contain pages on the child’s day of birth, the birth family, the foster family, friends, talents and achievements, goals and dreams, etc. Certainly, the task of creating a lifebook can be undertaken directly by a foster family member, a task that will prove to be  a true bonding experience  for both the adult and child.Click this link for information on how to create a Lifebook: http://charityguide.org/volunteer/fewhours/foster-care.htm

Multiple Placements in Foster Care: Literature Review of Correlates and Predictors.

www.cfrc.illinois.edu/LRpdfs/PlacementStability.LR.pdf (2004)

Project supported by the Children and Family Research Center, School of Social Work, University Of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Also in Social Work Journal, 10, 301-317. For individuals interested on the impact of multiple placements, literature review presents a scholarly treatise on the subject.Click this link to download the file: www.cfrc.illinois.edu/LRpdfs/PlacementStability.LR.pdf

Journal Articles:

Concept-Mapping the Challenges Faced by Foster Parents  (.pdf file)
Brown, J. Calder, P. (June 1999) Concept-Mapping the Challenges Faced by Foster Parents. Children and Youth Services Review   Vol. 21, 481-495To discern the challenges of foster parenting, 40 adults from 30 foster families were asked what it would take for them to consider stopping foster parenting. Responses to this question were  categorized had hoc into 4 themes:  1) challenges of working with the staff of child welfare services,  2) challenges stemming from perceived views  about their work having low value in the perception of others, especially child welfare services, 3) challenges  descriptive of threats to family and personal safety, including physical, emotional, and legal,  and 4) personal, familial, and stress-related challenges that could cause thoughts of quitting foster parenting.  Results of the study are consistent with empirical research on the challenges faced by foster parents.

Developmental Issues for Young Children in Foster Care
Committee on Early Childhood, Adoption and Dependent Care (2000) Developmental Issues for Young Children in Foster Care. Pediatrics. Vol. 6. No 5, pp.1145 -1150.Infants and toddlers are at a stage in their development when brain growth is most active. Entering foster care at this time requires careful monitoring by all participants in the child care system to ensure the experience is a positive one. For children with serious mental and/or physical  issues, efforts need to be taken to  make sure that foster care will be a healing process for them. This article reviews developmental issues that need to be considered with regard to young children entering foster care.  http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/106/5/1145.full