University of Delaware Office of Public Relations The Messenger Vol. 6, No. 1/1996 Program designed to improve relationships in foster care A television news story in 1991 inspired Mary Dozier, associate professor of psychology, to begin research that may eventually benefit foster children. In the story, a 2-year-old girl who had been in a foster family's care since shortly after her birth was being moved to another foster family who shared her ethnicity. The move was done at her biological mother's request. Seeing the story made Dozier question how attachments the child had formed would complicate the move. "Attachment issues are the key development task in infancy," Dozier says. "The more secure a relationship between child and caregiver is, the more positive the effect on the child," she explains. Because a foster child's relationship with his or her foster parents is tenuous and often short-lived, the task becomes that much harder for him or her. In 1996, Dozier received a $1 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to develop a program for foster parents designed to help them understand and improve the behaviors of foster children. "Foster children probably unknowingly develop strategies that push people away," Dozier says, including the inability to develop a secure, trusting relationship with a caregiver, ineffective problem-solving skills and behavior problems. By considering foster parents as "treatment providers," instead of simply a family and home for a child, Dozier says she hopes to improve the foster child's outlook. Dozier hypothesizes that if the foster family understands the behavior of the foster child, it will encourage the child to rely on the family. Thanks to the Delaware Division of Family Services and the Department of Social Services in Baltimore, the program is now in place in New Castle and Kent counties in Delaware and in Baltimore, but its effectiveness has yet to be assessed. The program works to inform foster parents about strategies that foster children may use to cope with their histories of "non- optimal caregiving," Dozier explains. "Foster children are apt to appear as if they do not need caregivers or that caregivers are unable to soothe them. Our intervention helps foster parents become aware that their babies need them, regardless of how they act. "For example, if a baby hurts himself and does not go to the foster parent for nurturing, the foster parent is likely to assume she is unneeded. "We help her to recognize that the baby does need her but has learned that he cannot count on anyone. Therefore, the foster mother must let the baby know time and time again that she is there, that she'll love him when he's hurt, scared, sick or just feeling fussy." Dozier conducts her research in a variety of ways, including interviews with foster and biological parents, videotaping situations in the home and observing children at play to see how they get along with each other and receiving reports about children's behavior from their teachers. Using this information, Dozier and her graduate students "assess the effectiveness of their intervention on parental sensitivity, child-caregiver relationship quality and child behavioral and emotional problems," Dozier says. Though her research was inspired by one, small girl in a brief news story, many foster children may benefit from Dozier's work, feeling more secure in their foster-care situations and later, in their adult lives. -Jennifer Bevan, Delaware '97