A review of selected foster care-adoption research from 1978 to mid-1982.

What can be learned from the research conducted during this 5-year period? Although none of these studies pinpointed why it took so long to make permanent plans for children, an experiment [Stein et al. 1978] in California indicated that changes in child welfare practice can achieve permanence for more children: behavioral contracting and intensive contact with biological parents expedited return home or adoption. With regard to recent adoption research, the finding that children adopted at older ages encounter more difficulties is certainly not news to adoption workers. What may be of interest, however, is that when the effects of age are controlled for, youngsters adopted transracially or by single parents fare as well as children adopted inracially or by two-parent families. In addition, adoption workers may want to give further consideration to helping adoptive parents deal with the reactions of their extended families, since recent research has suggested that the extended family can have an important influence on a youngster's adjustment. Research on foster parents underscored the importance of training. It has been suggested that foster fathers are more likely to become involved when training provides explicit information. Other studies have indicated that social workers should be sensitive to foster parents' values regarding sex education and should be more careful in distinguishing foster care from adoption. Recent research also is beginning to show the dimensions of the problem of recidivism. Recognition that a proportion of foster children do reenter the system is a necessary first step toward developing strategies to reduce recidivism. Further research, with controls, to examine whether aftercare services can reduce recidivism is warranted, now that the characteristics of this vulnerable population have been identified.