A Survey of North American Specialist Foster Family Care Programs

Abstract

Over the past 10 years, specialist foster family care services have emerged as a distinct child welfare service. Snowballing sampling techniques were used to identify over 1,200 possible North American specialist foster family care programs; 293 met six criteria established as defining a specialist foster family care program. Data on the programs, ranging from size, number of clients, foster parent training, size of caseload, length of stay, and intervention techniques, are presented.