Practically everyone who works with foster, adoptive, and kinship children – their caregiver parents, caseworkers, therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists – has come to know Dr. Rick Delaney's work. This latest book, the 3rd edition of his classic Fostering Changes, brings us completely up to date on what is known about attachment theory in relation to today's foster children and how that can help us to better understand and treat them.
Fueled by the ever-growing needs and numbers of foster, adoptive, and kinship children, there is intensive movement on all scientific and social fronts to try to manage and master this most telling issue of our time. To make matters worse, the shocking rise in meth use is creating unforeseen depths of disturbances in children and straining a system already at a breaking point. Parents and professionals alike have simply been caught off guard.
In Fostering Changes, Dr. Delaney makes an urgent but objective appeal to try to tease apart fact from fiction in the fast-changing world of complex knowledge about children in our care system. He goes about this by reviewing the foundations of attachment theory in the first two chapters. In his characteristic blend of science and folk wisdom, Dr. Delaney makes theory come to life through the use of many case examples and penetrating analyses.
In the next two chapters he applies the theory more specifically to children in care: how severe disruptions in the attachment process create various disturbances in children's development and behavior, and how it impels them to reenact their traumas.
Another of Dr. Delaney's central goals is to convert the information and insights he's gained over his long clinical experience into practical training for caregiver parents. The next two chapters are devoted to examining characteristic ways foster parents respond to these extraordinary circumstances, and how parents can bring about positive changes in their children's problem behavior. These chapters are rife with examples of how to apply attachment theory to a whole array of problems.
Throughout the book, but especially in the closing chapter, Dr. Delaney tackles the controversies swirling around Reactive Attachment Disorder, or RAD, by contrasting popular misunderstanding and misuses of the diagnosis with clinical definitions and applications based on current research and practices.
This latest edition is a must for all parents and professionals in the care system who want to stay current with attachment theory and understand its vast implications for foster children and families.
