Kasi G. Patterson Ph.d.

Children in Foster Care: the Effects of Foster Parent Characteristics on Anxiety Levels of Children Placed in the Foster Care System Kasi G. Patterson Ph.d.

Children involved in the child welfare system typically experience multiple placements during their time with respective Child Protective Service Agencies. Identifying adequate and appropriate placements is often a difficult task, with adequate resources and federal funding decreasing every fiscal year. The task becomes more difficult when the identified child in need of placement has an emotional and/or behavioral disturbance. The current study examined the effect of specific foster parent characteristics on reported anxiety levels of children in foster care. The study involved 16 children and ten foster families across two different forms of foster care, namely traditional foster homes and Proctor homes, which are treatment based foster homes. The results of this study will hopefully fuel additional research on children placed in the foster care system and encourage Child Protective Service Agencies to recruit and select qualified and caring foster parents in effort to help alleviate or reduce the reported levels of anxiety in foster children.