In Place of Parents

In Place of Parents. A study of foster care. By Gordon Trasler. Routledge 6? Kegan Paul. 25s. In making this study the author was able to work closely with the staff of the Devon Children's Department, the area in which his research was carried out and he has clearly gained a great deal from close collaboration with its caseworkers. Trasler took as his study sample all those children in the care of one local authority who had experienced at least one failure in a foster home in a defined three-year period. He used as his control, or, as he prefers to describe it, his "contrast" group, children who were satisfactorily placed in foster homes, the "satisfactoriness" of a placement being determined by clearly defined criteria. Each placement was independently rated on a five-point scale by at least two caseworkers. Eighty-one placements were rated "excellent" by both judges and these formed the "contrast" group in the study. The major part of the book is devoted to a discussion and analysis of those determinants of success or failure in foster placement which seemed to the author to be important. He has illustrated his findings by careful histories of typical children. The author also gives attention to the problems and emotional stresses of the foster Parents themselves.