The Foster Homes Research Project was conducted by the Division of Family Services under the direction of Dr. Patricia Cautley with partial support from the Division of Child Welfare Research and Demonstration Grant Program, Social and Rehabilitation Services of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The purpose of the project was to test the value of information obtained in interviews with prospective foster parents in predicting their relative success in caring for foster children. Among the goals of the project was to determine which factors were most important in predicting the success of prospective foster parents and to develop questionnaires and interview schedules which could be used by social services agencies for the selection of foster parents.
The Foster Homes Research Project grew out of an earlier study of foster home placements conducted in the Division of Children and Youth, later the Division of Family Services. The findings of this study are reported in Successful Foster Homes: An Exploratory Study of Their Characteristics, Patricia Cautley, Martha Aldridge, and Bernard Finifter, Wisconsin Department of Public Welfare, Madison, WI (June, 1966). Between 1967 and 1973, the Foster Homes Research Project conducted a variety of interviews with prospective foster families, with foster mothers and foster fathers who had children between the ages of 6 and 12 placed in their homes, and with the social workers supervising these placements. Initial interviews were conducted with 963 applicant families where each husband and wife was studied separately. A series of “process” interviews were conducted at regular intervals for up to eighteen months or until the placement was terminated with smaller samples of new and experienced foster parents who had 6 to 12 year old foster children placed in their homes. Social workers supervising these placements were interviewed as soon as possible after a placement was made and at six months thereafter for up to 18 months. The project also collected data on the demographic characteristics of the foster family, the natural family and the foster child; on foster parent attitudes; on the outcome of home studies conducted by the social service agencies making placements; and on the characteristics of the social workers supervising each placement. (For details on sample selection, sample size, and interview techniques see: Methodology, below.)
Applicant families were referred to the research project staff beginning in April 1967 by seven district offices of the Wisconsin Division of Family Services, twenty-two county social service agencies in Wisconsin, three county agencies in Minnesota, five district offices in Illinois, and one private agency. Agencies informed applicant families that they would be contacted by the research project staff, but the research project interviews and the agencies' own evaluations of foster parents were conducted separately. participation in the project was voluntary on the part of both the agencies and the foster parents.
Data collected from the interviews was coded from the tape recorded interviews, key punched and analyzed to determine which factors contributed most to predictions of success in the placement of foster children in new homes. Among the factors considered were demographic characteristics of foster parents, the nature of their own experiences with growing up, their experience with children and child rearing, their attitudes toward child development, and the experience and amount of time spent by social workers in making foster home placements. The project also considered what effect the kind of child placed, the role of the natural parents during the placement, and the kind and extent of help provided by the social worker would have on predictions of success. The results of the research project were reported in Predictors of Success in Foster Care, Patricia W. Cautley and Martha Aldridge, Department of Health and Social Services, Madison, WI (1973).
Methodology
The study of new foster homes:
1) Study of Initial Applicants: Once an agency agreed to cooperate with the research project, an agency case worker agreed to send the name and address of each applicant family to a member of the research project staff. Each applicant family was contacted and arrangements were made for completion of two questionnaires each by the prospective foster mother and foster father as well as for completion of a tape recorded interview conducted separately with each foster parent usually within two weeks of the initial referral.
Of 1,102 eligible families referred to the project, 963 were interviewed, 31 of which were single parent applicants. Of these families, 963 women and 880 men were interviewed. The research project staff interviewed prospective foster parents regardless of their stated preference for children in a particular age group, with the exception of family who were interested exclusively in infant care.
2) In-depth Study of Placements: The study of placements was restricted to 145 applicant families accepted as foster parents by the cooperating agencies who had a 6 to 12 year old child placed in their homes. Of the original 963 applicant families interviewed, 628 were accepted by the agencies as potential foster parents. Of these, 479 had a foster child placed with them by the end of the project's data collection period. Six to 12 year old children were placed in the homes of 193 of these families, of which only 145 were available for the in-depth study because of late notification by the agencies of the placements or because the placements were expected to be temporary. A random sample of 30 families (20 percent) of these 145 placement families were selected as a control group in order to test the possible effect of repeated interviews on the outcome of the placement. No follow-up interviews were conducted with these families, and only one interview was conducted with the social worker supervising the placement when the placement had lasted 18 months, or at the time it was terminated.
Follow-up interviews, called “process” interviews were conducted with the remaining 115 families included in the in-depth study. Foster mothers were interviewed at the end of the first four weeks of the placement, and the foster mother and foster father were interviewed separately at the end of three months, six months, twelve months, and eighteen months if the placement lasted that long. Three placements were terminated before the first interview could be conducted with the foster mother. Social workers supervising the placements were interviewed as soon as possible after the placement was made and at the end of six months, twelve months, and eighteen months. Special interview schedules were developed to meet the specific objectives of each interview.
3) Collection and Analysis of the Data: A staff of 24 interviewers were hired and trained to conduct the tape recorded interviews. A large staff working over a period of four years reduced the tape recorded interviews to data which could be coded and transferred to punched cards. A number of the early interviews were transcribed to facilitate the development of the code by the professional staff, but no efforts were made to transcribe the majority of the interviews. Most coding was done directly from the tape recorded interviews after the staff was trained to analyze the interviews at “an acceptable level of reliability” (in general at a level of 80 to 90 percent agreement on all codes).
The Study of Non-New Foster Homes:
After the research project was well underway, the funding agency requested the project staff to consider studying a group of experienced foster families, referred to by the project as “non-new” families. Any family who had cared for a foster child for at least one month was considered “non-new.” Ten agencies cooperated in this aspect of the research project, referring 81 placements of 6 to 12 year old children to the project staff for in-depth study. This group of families was studied using the same procedures as those used for the new foster families with slight alterations to the interview schedules to account for their experience. A random sample of 18 families (20 percent) was identified with whom no interviews were conducted during the course of the placement. The data collected from tape recorded interviews was also coded directly to punched cards. The project staff did not make a systematic attempt to compare new and non-new families, primarily because of the smaller size of the sample of non-new homes and the fact that the non-new sample contained a large percentage of placements from one metropolitan area and a large number of single and black families.
