When you decide to foster, you are faced with many difficult decisions, dilemmas and questions: How do you navigate the daily struggles of foster parenting? How can you nurture bonds with your foster child who is angry, sad, and defiant? How can you prepare to step back when it's time to let go?

Foster Parenting Step-by-Step is a concise how-to guide to fostering that summarizes what to expect as a foster parent, and gives immediate practical solutions. It outlines the different stages of a fostering relationship, raising common issues encountered at each age and how to tackle them. It also explains the impact of trauma on your child: how this can show itself through challenging behavior and how to respond to it.

This book will provide fostering parents with the skills and knowledge to support the needs of the children in foster care. It will be invaluable not just to foster parents but also to those professionals supporting foster placements.

A concise how-to guide to fostering that summarizes what to expect as a foster parent, and gives immediate practical solutions

About the Author
Dr. Kalyani Gopal is a licensed clinical psychologist with over 25 years' experience specialising in working with foster parents. She regularly contributes to Foster Focus magazine offering expert advice. She is on the Lake County Child Protection and Child Fatality Team and is an international speaker on foster care and child abuse. She is President and Clinical Director of Mid-America Psychological and Counselling Services in Merrillville, Indiana and supervises five outpatient clinics in Indiana and Illinois. She is President, Clinical Psychology of Women, APA, Division 12, Section IV and lives in Merrillville, Indiana, USA.

Reviews
Dr. Gopal has been a lifeline for many children in foster care and their parents and foster parents for many years. [She] is also a well-known speaker and has blessed the National Foster Parent Association with numerous workshop presentations at our annual education conferences. In Foster Parenting Step-by-Step: How to Nurture the Traumatized Child and Overcome Conflict, Dr. Gopal... writes as if she were sitting across the table from you and explaining the incredibly many aspects of foster care and foster parenting. My recommendation is to read the book from cover to cover, taking time to mark those areas that you know you will want to refer to time and time again as you welcome additional children into your home. This new book provides insights and recommendations that will be beneficial to all who chose to provide foster care and/or kinship care. -- From the foreword by Irene Clements, Foster Care Consultant and President of the National Foster Parent Association (NFPA), Minneapolis, USA
This useful book is valuable for foster carers (and prospective foster carers) in helping to consider the issues around looking after other people's children who have suffered early difficulties in their lives. It will help any foster carer to work reflectively and consider the options and issues that the child they are looking after is facing, together with ideas about strategies that might usefully be used in understanding and managing situations. As with all good foster care sharing ideas and thoughts gained in studying this book is made more effective by discussion in supervision. -- Jim Bond MBE, Foster Carer and Counselor



Book Information
ISBN 9781849059374
Author Irene Clements
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Publisher Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Weight(grams) 205g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 139mm * 5mm