{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.015730337078651686, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.305949008498583, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Book Review: Underlining the Need for Support

Underlining the need for support stance, with lone carers who have little or no informal support from families or relatives being more likely to withdraw. Following an examination of the characteristics and rationale of carers who cease to foster, the authors are able to outline a series of key recommendations in order to support foster carers better and ultimately improve current levels of recruitment and retention. Firstly, and essentially, the nature of the fostering required should match the capacity and situation of the foster family. Secondly, foster carers should be made to feel part of a ‘social services team’. This necessitates adequate payment, training and support from other carers and family placement social workers. The third recommendation concerns the need for crises or major events to be accompanied by flexible and supportive responses and, where possible, early intervention from social services. Instances when this support is needed include those in which carers experience severe differences with birth parents, family tensions because of a particular placement or strong disagreements with social services. In the final chapter, a more detailed exposition of these implications incorporates practical recommendations of use to policy-makers and managers of local authorities, ranging from the development of carer support groups and relief breaks to the use of experienced foster carers in recruitment and training. The engaging tone and style of this book ensure that it is accessible to the lay reader as well as the professional and academic. This inclusiveness is evidenced in the coupling of clearly written text with statistical research findings and an easy-to-follow logical structure. It is possible to dip in and out of this text according to your particular interests, with each chapter containing concluding thoughts and some discussion of implications for practice. Foster Carers should therefore appeal to policy-makers and senior staff in local authorities as well as foster carers, social work professionals, social scientists and, more generally, anyone with an interest in foster care. Book reviews are edited by Miranda Davies