Chapter 21: Specialist Fostering:

Specialist foster family care has quietly developed in the last twenty years and consistently reflects features of families' services providing within their homes, receiving payment for services, and are the primary service providers with social workers and other staff providing back up supervision and consultation. Matters for consideration as this programming thrust develops include distinguishing models of service which define the problem as lying with the child who is assumed to require treatment contracted with models which take a more ecological approach, clarifying the roles of foster parents and social workers, specifying the role of birth parents in specialist foster family care programs, developing the relationship of specialist foster family care to permanency planning, and identifying possible future directions including more extensive use of this type of service for adults.