needed in 12 hours

Title

Educating foster parents: improving parental practices to promote attachment.

Introduction and Background

Foster care is a temporary care-giving service for children who have been removed from their parent and/or guardian’s household to protect their survival, safety, and developmental needs (Mulcahy&Trocme, 2010). Relatives and/or non-relatives of the child can provide foster caregiving services and become their foster parents. Placing the children under the care of a relative is called kinship care (Hong, Algood, Chiu, & Lee, 2011). Group homes are residential settings that can be treatment-focused or a temporary placement for a child waiting for a foster home. These organizations have various individuals involved to support youth in their treatment and/or transitions. Foster, kinship, and group homes are the middle ground during which the biological parent(s) can take action towards the reason for child removal, to create a safe and nurturing environment for their child. If the parent is unsuccessful in creating the necessary conditions required for positive child development, then the child can be put up for adoption or be placed in long-term foster care (PHAC, 2010).

Canada reports statistics provincially because of the differing definitions of the requirements of placing children in foster care (PHAC, 2010). In 2008, there were an estimated 235,842 child maltreatment investigations, of which 85,440 were substantiated, resulting in 14.19 investigations per 1000 children (PHAC, 2010). Of the substantiated cases, 19.599 children were required to be removed from the current residences (PHAC, 2010). In addition, 82% of substantiated cases reported one type of maltreatment with physical abuse being the most frequent, whereas the remaining 18% reported more than one type of maltreatment - with neglect and exposure to intimate partner violence being the most frequent (PHAC, 2010). Public Health Agency of Canada (2010) reported exposure to intimate partner violence (34%) and neglect (34%) as the most frequent grounds for removal, followed by physical abuse (20%), emotional maltreatment (9%), and sexual abuse (3%). Public Health Agency of Canada identifies 46% of the children reported functioning issues: Academic difficulty (23%), internalizing disorders (19%), externalizing disorders (15%), attachment issues (14%), and/or academic and development disabilities (11%).

Children in foster care have experienced maltreatment in the form of neglect, abuse, and/or trauma. These children are removed from the current living circumstances in the hope to provide a better and safe environment to support their development. These children are a vulnerable population due to their experiences. Many children exhibit maladaptive behaviour, mental health concerns, and disruption in foster care placement (Rincon-Cortes & Sullivan, 2014; Scott, 2011). A protective factor noted for children in foster care is the development of a secure relationship (Rincon-Cortes & Sullivan, 2014; Scott, 2011). A protective factor as mentioned in this particular literature on adequate child development is the bond created between the child and its caregivers such as the parents. Research shows that for this emotional bond to grow, it has to be established in a safe environment (Porges, S. W. (2003)). When a child does not experience the protective factor and is exposed to violence and abuse, the emotional bonds are adversely affected negatively (Porges, S. W. (2003)). Children foster care plays a crucial role to ascertain the children’s well-being. Therefore, in this way, it is essential for the new bond to develop an attachment base during which the child feels protected, safe, a sense of belonging, and is emotionally understood within, therefore promoting the development of a secure relationship (Scott, 2011). Creating a secure relationship earlier can buffer negative effects of being in foster care (Rincon-Cortes & Sullivan, 2014). Children in foster care have experienced disruptions in attachment with their caregiver(s) or parents due to failure in fulfilling necessities.

The disruption influences their ability to form attachment with new parents. Without the development of a secure relationship, youth are put in a vulnerable position in which they feel lost, unsupported, and isolated; therefore, increasing their risk of negative mental health, problematic behaviour, placement disruption, loneliness, homelessness, poverty, and conflict with the law (Leve, Harold, Chamberlain, Landsverk, Fisher, &Vostanis, 2012; OCYA, 2013; Rincon-Cortes, 2014). This study seeks to explore the extent to which this 12-session programme provides and improves attachment-related knowledge and practices in foster parents on building attachment with the children, something which various existent attachment-based interventions such as Child-Centered Psychotherapy, Child-Parent Relational Therapy and Connect (Rincon-Cortes & Sullivan, 2014; Scott, 2011) have failed to look into as expansively as possible. The study will be able to provide answers that the other methods may have failed to deal with accordingly.The population affected by Canadian foster care is important in the field of psychology due to the vast number of families involved. Individuals within these families are provided opportunities to enhance mental health to live their lives to the fullest, provide adequate care, validate past experiences, and empowerment to create a successful future. Comment by Angel: Great progress!! Few issues though. In addition to the excellent introduction you have provided so far, I would include the gaps to which your study will address. In this last-long paragraph state the main gaps that you found in the literature and how your study will addresse them. This strength your justification. As to the: “will be able to provide answers that the other methods may have failed to deal with accordingly” argument…This might not be feasible to say. Why? Just because the aim of your study is not to PROVE other researchers are wrong. The gaps will have to focus on Canadian workshops...lack of research in this respect in Canada…specific and novel advatages that your study will use and how this will contribute to the international litertuare and above all, to the main problem…-lack of attachment-related practices in foster parents Once you highigt the gaps your study will address, then finish the paragraph as you have by stating the purpose of your study. Well done

This research seeks to explore effectiveness of a 12-session programme in improving parents’ knowledge and understanding with regard to attachment. Thus leading to the research question: could a 12-session programme improve parent’s knowledge and understanding with regard to attachment? Comment by Angel: Excellent ending

Literature Review

The foster care has been regarded with significant amount of negative impact on it due to which there is scarcity of children being enrolled in the foster care as compared to the children being enrolled in other systems (AJ Litrownik, JA Landsverk - Child abuse & neglect, 2000). The researches have providedempirical evidence that many children in the foster care have been regarded with significant maltreatment in terms of physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological abuse (Leve, Harold, Chamberlain, Landsverk, Fisher, &Vostanis, 2012; Scott, 2011). Children are at a higher risk of performing poorly in other domains of their life, (i.e. socio-emotional development, academics, behavioural development, and psychological development) due to the various events occurring in their lives (Leve et al., 2012; PHAC, 2010; Scott, 2011). In addition, they exhibit disruption in attachment with their parents, guardians, siblings, and/or other relatives (PHAC, 2010) when the environment they grow in is unsafe. The lack of ability to bond with others, results in greater placement disruption, higher rates of internalizing disorders and externalizing symptoms, neurological changes, thereby hindering psychological development (Leve et al., 2012; PHAC, 2010). The transition to a foster home is a challenging experience in which the infant, child, and/or adolescent has to develop new relationships, adapt to a new culture, and move on from past adversities (ACC, 2010). Unfortunately, some youth continue to experience maltreatment within foster homes, which makes this transition even more challenging (ACC, 2010).

Attachment Impacting Foster Placement. Lack of placements for children in foster care has become a major concern in the Canadian foster care system resulting in inadequate criminal history record checks, fast process of placing a child in a home, and overcrowding of foster households (The Canadian Press, 2012). Moreover, there have been traces of inadequate care results in greater placement changes for youth, these are found resulting in lack of attachment, mental health concerns, problematic behaviour, academic struggles, and changes in socio-emotional development among the children (Kim & Leve, 2011; Walker, 2008). Anderson (2009) noted that 70% of the children in his study experienced placement instability where frequent moves affect the children. Age and insecure attachment were linked to greater placement instability. Greater placement disruption is associated with negative outcomes for the youth as it demonstrates continuous disruption in the care-giving system and changes within the child’s atmosphere (Khoo&Skoog, 2014; Leve et al., 2013).

Research on placement disruption (this is exiting the current placement for a negative reason) focuses on children in foster care, neglecting role of foster caregivers in contributing to placement disruption (Khoo&Skoog, 2014). Specifically, past research notes placement disruption due to the age of the child, problematic behaviour, and past experiences (Khoo&Skoog, 2014). (MA Taber - Children and youth services review, 1985) defined placement breakdown as as repeated moves among foster care placements, which reflect a pattern of reciprocal alienation and rejection between a child and successive caregivers. Placement breakdown is a result of a series of events in which the child, biological parents, foster caregivers, and social workers are involved (Khoo&Skoog, 2014). Khoo and Sjoog (2014) found in their study that, foster caregivers noted that the lack of knowledge they possessed about the biological family and the child; inadequate understanding of their role; lack of support; stress associated with being a foster caregiver; difficult experiences of and with the child; complex needs of the child; and a poor relationship with social worker, the child, and/or the biological family hindered their ability to parent the child effectively, causing strains within their lives and their relationships of all involved. Developing secure attachment is associated with greater placement stability as it allows the youth to develop meaningful relationships in which one feels loved, safe, accepted, and a sense of belonging (Leve et al., 2012).

Children in foster care are in a jeopardized position primarily due to the presence of multiple caregivers in multiple placements hindering their ability to develop an attachment bond with a primary caregiver (Hong et al., 2011; Prather & Golden, 2009). In addition, some caregivers who are committed to developing a secure relationship with children in foster care continue to face struggles in developing attachment, as these children may be very hesitant due to their past experiences of mistrust and safety (Oosterman&Schuengel, 2008; Prather & Golden, 2009). Developing secure relationship may be easier with younger children in comparison to older children. Research continues to demonstrate the ability to form a secure relationship when a child is placed in care before age-2 (Cornell &Hamrin, 2008; Dozier et al., 2009; Ponciano, 2010, Scott, 2011). Struggles in developing attachment for older children may be due to increased changes in attachment, longer experiences with disrupted and/or disorganized attachment, and internal working model that supports behaviour that restrict attachment, and increased contact with various individuals who aim to provide caregiving services. However, even children younger than age-2 who have experienced disrupted attachment, experience various detrimental changes that impact their ability to develop attachment, such as neurological changes that are shaped by experiences (Scott, 2011).

Can Attachment be built in Foster Care?

Building attachment within the foster home is a crucial task for children and caregivers. Joseph, O’Connor, Briskman, Maughan, and Scott (2014) assessed the hypothesis that past attachment relationships influence attachment within future relationships. More specifically, they noted children in foster care to have exhibited past insecure relationship, thereby limiting their ability to develop future secure relationship with subsequent caregivers. Therefore, experiences with abuse would be internalized by the child, influencing their perceptions of self, others, relationships, and normality (Joseph et al., 2014). Many of these adolescents had experienced multiple forms of maltreatment, placement disruption, and problematic behaviour. Joseph (2014) found 95% of adolescents in foster care exhibited insecure attachment with their birth parents. However, 46% of those adolescents were able to develop secure bond with their foster mothers and 49% with their foster fathers. Those who demonstrated secure attachment with their primary caregivers also demonstrated secure attachment with their foster parents. Adolescents who possessed secure attachment were younger when they were taken into care, experienced parental sensitivity, and had been in care for a longer period of time. The development of a secure bond with foster families resulted in fewer problematic behaviours and a greater sense of belonging and acceptance.Recent research has noted that attachment in foster care is crucial. Therefore, several interventions have been put in place to encourage the development of healthy attachment bonds.

Developing an intervention that works on the attachment relationship between foster caregivers and foster children is essential in promoting well-being of both parties. This in turn assists these children in developing healthy patterns that can assist them throughout their adulthood (Scott, 2011). Interventions note parental sensitivity as a crucial element in developing secure attachment. Parental sensitivity is a factor associated with secure attachment due to the level of commitment, delight, and emotional responsiveness towards a relationship (Bick & Dozier, 2013; Joseph, O’Connor, Briskman, Maughan, & Scott, 2014). Ponciano (2010) examined the role of maternal sensitivity in the promotion of secure attachment among 76 foster mothers and 58 foster children over a 9-month period. (KE Gleason1998) defined maternal sensitivity as a mother's ability to perceive and infer the meaning behind her infant's behavioural signals, and to respond to them promptly and appropriately. Within the parent child dyads, 58% were able to develop secure attachment, whereas 42% of the youth continued to be classified under insecure attachment. The insecure attachment was caused by factors that affected the youth when growing up. These factors included, physical neglect, sexual abuse, separation from primary caregiverinconsistency in primary caregiver, among others.The parent-child dyads who were able to form secure attachment due to enhanced maternal sensitivity, were more likely to have only one-foster child, have fewer visits with biological parents, be younger, feel supported, and be considered for adoption by the same foster family (Ponciano, 2010).

Research has provided empirical evidence to suggest that successful intervention needs to target various systems that affect the child’s development, therefore, child-caregiver relationship, solidarity among co-caregivers, sources of support, culture of the client, developmental milestones, and effective education and training (Cornell &Hamrin, 2008; Hong et al., 2011). Interventions designed for foster parents need to provide them the knowledge to assist the child in repairing their past through acknowledgment, validation, and providing support to the child (Cornell &Hamrin, 2008). Interventions that have proven effective have mainly focus on understanding, validating, and growing from past experiences that involve a form of attachment between a primary caregiver and the child (TM Levy - 1999). Approaches used in successful interventions have included sessions ranging from play-therapy to psycho-education and psychotherapy (Stinchart, Scott, & Barfield, 2012). Attachment-related interventions aim to enhance attachment processes within families by changing dysfunctional patterns to make the family interactions more functional (TM Levy - 1999). A number of empirical studies have shown that interventions with parents are an effective strategy to enhance attachment within the family. These studies however have not shown much focus on foster parents. The literature review that forms a basis of empirical studies in this topic have mainly focused on countries such as Australia, Argentina, Mongolia and Iraq. There is however, no such research in Canada. The situation in Canada currently with regards to foster care is of great importance given that the country does not keep reliable statistics on children but instead rely on provincial reporting. This therefore calls for the need to pay great attention to the appropriate long term strategy related to foster programmes like; training foster parents in order to acquire appropriate attachment-related parental practices in so as to improve Canadian Foster Parents System.Further explore the effectiveness of an intervention program of this nature in Canada based on the12-session programme in improving parents’ perception and understanding with regard to attachment. Comment by Angel: This is a better paragraph and ending….just re-read the last 9 lines since sometimes there are cut-sentences which have lost the maining. Just make sure you are stating what you want to say in a perfect way ok?

Research Question

Could a 12-session programme improve parent’s knowledge, practices and understanding with regard to attachment? Comment by Angel: I added this one

Aim(s) and Objectives

Aim:

The aim of this study is to explore effectiveness of a 12-session programme in improving parents’ knowledge, practices and understanding with regard to attachment. Comment by Angel: I added this one

Objectives

· To explore parents’perceptions with regard to parent-child attachment prior to the workshop.

· To design, plan and facilitate a 12-session psycho-educational programme

· To explore parents’ preceptions with regard to attachment after the workshop.

· To analyze the extent to which the workshop had an impacton the foster parents’knowledge regarding attachment.

Methods

Design: 

This study will follow a qualitative approach. This method is the most preferred for its suitability in analysing quality of contents in the respondents’ feedbacks by making use of pre-post design methodology (Rummel & Bitchener, 2015). The nature of the workshop will demand the use of open-ended questions in most cases with some answers being exclusively descriptive. The advantages of pre-post design is valuable to the 12-programe session workshop in that it illustrates as well as documents individual knowledge gains of parents of the workshop participants (Lambert et al, 2001). Secondly, the design will allow for easy handling of the different groups involved in placement of participants upon entry to the workshop while post-test does the same upon completion of the workshop. The main reason for using the pre-post design is that participants’ perceptions before and after the process will be known (Erol and Erdogan, 2008) which would be helping in getting results required to determine how effective the workshop for a 12-session programme was, Whilst with this research design it might be difficult to come up a with a conclusion about the whole impact of the workshop due to the impact of confounding variables, however, it will be able to provide empirical evidence as to the strategies, desing and content that had an effect in participatns during the 12-sessions programme (Joseph,O’Connor, Briskman, Maughan& Scott, 2014). Secondly, due to the similar questions in pre-test, some participants may absorb knowledge just from taking the test and will attend more readily to the content. However, the design will also provide with the knowledge concerning the understanding of the factors involved in attachment better. Comment by Angel: I changed this Comment by Angel: I changed this Comment by Angel: …in knowing the extent to which the 12-sessions workshop had an impact Comment by Angel: I changed this one as well. Comment by Angel: There is no firstly…so delete it and starts with…One potential limitation in the use of the same measure in pre-post desings, is that participatns may becemo familiar with the measure and thus…. Complete the idea please….and then insert the “however” to finish with an advantage.

Sampling:

This study will make use of a convenience sample (Wilson &MaClean, 2011).This means that foster parents who are identified and selected must meet the criteria set by the research question. As noted earlier, the research question seeks to understand if the 12- programme will be of help. As such, the population sample must be able to understand the research question and be able to answer the interview questiin appropriately (Hurst &Arulogun, 2015). The sample size will comprise 20 participants chosen from a population of 200 foster parents. Twenty participants are 10% of the accessible population of participants. The 10% is seen as optimal sample since it relatively small and can, therefore, give accurate results (Hurst &Arulogun, 2015). The population size will be the number of potential participants that the reserachers would have contacted and administered the pre-intervioew questions to. The top 20 paricipants that will be selected in the pre-interview will reperesent the 20 participants for the research. They will act as the population sample of the interviwed 200 participants. They will however, have to meet the inclusion criteria. Unifying characteristics of the subjects in the sample will be the fact that each of them is engaged in foster care attachment programs. Furthermore, this study seeks to recruit participants from a population of Caucasian and other minority groups such as the aboriginals because reports indicate that these minority groups benefit more from the foster care attachment programs than the white majority (Hong, Algood, Chiu & Lee, 2011). The researcher will use a multi-racial church as recruitment grounds for sample subjects because the church keeps information on the racial profile of the attendees and thus it will be accurate to choose from the registered members who are also foster parents. The church will also be used because, it is situated in an area where cases of foster parenting are high. It will be easy to identify the background and credibility of the participants. One of the researchers will be a member of this church and hence it will be easy for the research team to get the sample size they need. Comment by Angel: Parlticipatns do not need to undersatind this….just you. Comment by Angel: …therefore…give accurate results as suggested by hurst and Arulogun (2015) Comment by Angel: This idea is not very clear. Do not speak based on an “ideal”…but rather state what you WILL do…in future tense. Comment by Angel: This has already been established when you mentioned that the sample size will comprise 20 participatns… Comment by Angel: fdelte Comment by Angel: as a venue? Place? Comment by Angel: If you do not have an academic reference to back up this idea, do not mention this. What is credibility of participatns? Comment by Angel: One of? How many researcher are included in this study?

Inclusion criteria:

Group1:

· Subjects in the sample will be all married individuals. This is because only married individuals are allowed by law to become foster parent and, therefore, they are the ones with experience of foster care.

· Participants should be enrolled in a foster parents programme for at least 10 years.

· The participants should have been in a marriage of more than 30 years.

Exclusion criteria

Group1:

· Only one parent can make a commitment to attend the 12-session psycho-educational programme. A couple is not allowed to attend, only one member of the couple can attend the 12 – programme.

· If the age is less than 30 or more than 50 then he/she would be excluded. Couples whose ages are less than 30 are not highly knowledgeable on parenting matters while couple aged beyond 50 have enough experience on parenting matters but might not be energetic enough for the workshop

Data Collection/Materials

This study will use interviews to collect the data required. Interview is a more interactive method of data collection in which a researcher questions,consults,orevaluatesone or more persons. It can be written or verbal as well as structured or unstructured (Hurst &Arulogun, 2015).Moreover, in this research these interviews will be used in order to understand the perception of the foster parents. The interviews are conducted in various study and scholarly articles which rationalise the point that the use of interviews is reliable and validated (Oldham, J. M., &Rosnick, L. (1990). Furthermore, the interviews are found to be a fast task which helps in accessing the responses in a faster and flexible manner, which means that the data collection has been achieved in less than expected time period (Boyce, C., & Neale, P. (2006)). This study will make use of structured interviews in order to gather participants’ perception about attachment before the 12-session workshop. The main reason why the reasearvher will use the structured interview is because, it is imperative to make sure that the interviewer does not deviate form the required format. In that way, the required response is more likely to be achieved. As much as structured interviews have the limitation of not being flexible, they make sure that researchers stay on track of the required reseach question. They give the best required answers as per the research proposal. The structure of the interviews will be based upon an extensive literature review of previous case studies on attachment (Feddern & Elklit, 2014). The researcher should decide on using questions inspired by previous case studies because such questions have Proven to be trustworthy and are appropriate to gathering the necessary information in order to address the main aim of this study. Comment by Angel: Ok, I have reviewd the questions you will use in the interview…. What I see is that those are quite general questions which sometimes help researchers or professionals desing an intervention. You need to tell me where you got those questions from? Why did you choose them? Why not others? Are they grounded in empirical studies? Which ones? Do empiticla studies you got these questions from were measuring a “psycyhological construct” just like attachment? You will also have to understand the concept of pre-post desing….as well as the way in which previous studies (focused on workshops as interventions) have measured the effectiveness of a given workshop. Please do this search and get back to me with hopefully more expertise in the way which you can “measure” the effectiveness of the programme. Based on these questions, I do not really see that you are measuring the construct you want to measure…attachment….why? because you have not included a single question regarding attachment-related knowledge, undertading and practices…as such, you must include questions that will help you mesure this. So…what you are getting with these qusstions is just participants perceptions of the workshop in general and not focused on attachment…..is this the aim of your study? So, we need to work in this, and you must review previous studies which focus on measuring psychological concstucts and also measure the effectiveness of the workshop. Now, What I also see is that this might be a semi-strucutred interview….do you know the difference between a semi-structured and structured interview? Which one is this one you are proposing? Interviews are used on specific cases…please have a look to specialised literature regarding interviews and think wheteher they are appropriate to “measue” attachment or not.

The researcher will select 10 questions which have been mostly intended to understand the perception of attachment patterns between children and the foster parents. The 10 questions will be structured in a way that they intend to find out the relationship of the foster parents and the children and how the 12- seesion programme will be of help during attachment. The data will be collected from the foster parents for both the pre-test and the post-test. This also includes the idea that the data collected through these interviews are the most reliable resources as they are first handed attained by the researchers. In general, Interviews are a useful method to investigate issues in an in depth way, discover how individuals think and feel about a topic and why they hold certain opinions, investigate the use, effectiveness and usefulness of particular library collections and services, inform decision making, strategic planning and resource allocation, sensitive topics which people may feel uncomfortable discussing in a focus group, add a human dimension to impersonal data and deepen understanding and explain statistical data (Boyce, C., & Neale, P. (2006). Comment by Angel: I do not think your questions are focused on this… As I said, please review 5-10 previous studies where a workshop has been implemented and also studies where a psychological construct has been measured

Procedure : Comment by Angel: I think there is no point in giving you more feedback in the following sections until you decide the best way in which the effectiveness of a workshop can be measured along with the psychological contrscut. Pelase review these issues and get back to me so that we can continue with the rest of the sections.

The process that would be undertaken to achieve this data collection will be:

1. First of all permission from the church authoritieswill be requested. Once the permission from the authorities has been granted, the researcher will access the venue and contact potential participants. The fact that many Foster Care centres are based in churches, the researcher will use a multi-racialchurch as recruitment grounds for sample subjects. The church attendees’ are registered by the church as its members and, therefore, it will be easy to know the background in terms of foster care and the credibility of the participants who have been members of the church for a long time.

2. Then the researcher will personally attend the worship in the church and explain purpose of the study to congregation. The researcher is a member of this church and this will facilitate having access to participants.

3. Contact interested applicants and brief them about the study, including potential risks vs. benefits, explaining psycho-educational group rather than treatment groups, explaining voluntary nature of this study, addressing further questions.

4. The interested people will be provided with complete consent and privacy form as an ethical measure to ensure confidentiality of information.

Participants will be given structured interviewcontaining pre-test questions. This will take place in the location of the workshop which will be in the church. The pre interview is the selection criteria and as such, the researcher will have to lay down the answers they expect from the pre interview questions in order to separate the qualified participants from the other participants.

5. After pre-test, the workshop begins, it will be conducted in Genesis (researcher’s church), a community location convenient to individuals of the Community, every 2nd and 4th Wednesday except for statutory holiday for approximately 2-hours per session in the researcher’s church.

6. During the post-assessment,participants will be interviewed by using structured interview used in the pre-assessment in order to gather information regarding their knowledge of attachment on after completion of programme.

Analysis:

The responses collected from the pre-post interviews will be analysed using content analysis method (Ritchie et al., 2013). This study will use formative content analysis for pre-tests and evaluative content analysis for post-test analysis (CJ Bonk, C Angeli - Instructional science, 2000). Formative method will assess the state of knowledge of participants. Evaluative method analyses (FR Volkmar, DVCicchetti - Journal of autism 2008) data on impact on perceptions and behaviour of participants towards what they have learnt in the workshop and whether there should be changes in context of the workshop in future. Evaluative content analysis helps in assessing effectiveness of a program (Ritchie et al., 2013).Content analysis is the best method for analysing data which is qualitative in nature. The advantage of this method is that it analyses contents of each communication elements to asses if there is any worth in the elements (Ritchie, Lewis, Nicholls &Ormston, 2013). Researcher will collect responses from pre-test, validate worth of answers given, compute average and rate extent of participant knowledge the way it is done in standard school classrooms. In content analysis, the researcher looks at responses and their values, sentence structures and wordings of those sentences because content analysis utilises all the elements of a communication process to determine credibility and worth of information. The post-tests will then be collected as well and computed to see the level of knowledge gained after the workshop. This is done by calculating the mean deviation between pre-test average and post-test average.Todetermine whether the 12-session programme has improved knowledgeof participants with regard to foster care, the answers given will be furtheranalysed to assess whether they determine perception of participants on foster care.

Ethical Considerations:

Ethical considerations will be undertaken as well. The first step will be to obtain ethical approval of research from the University of Liverpool. This will be done by filling out an Ethical Approval form with details of the proposed research and measures taken to observe ethics during the research. This research proposal will be reviewed by a panel of experts of the Ethics Review Board.

The church has an ethical related office that deals with many ethical issues. We will definitely follow the ethical rules set by the church ethical office. However, still will need the confidentiality of the participants as they will need to approve the research to be ethical. To this effect, a consent and privacy form will be completed to ensure confidentiality of the information. This form also, formally, assures the church of the legality of the entire process.

This willalso include the participants not being asked for their personal information such as name, helping them to stay focussed towards the survey and also provide responses with less biasness. Moreover, various ethical considerations will be taken into consideration such as (1) Promoting a safe and confidential environment in which participants can disclose, (3) ensuring participants understand the results of the study will ensure their privacy and confidentiality, and (4) lastly, ensuring participants their responses will notbe judged (Ritchie et al., 2013). 

The third step will be to ensure that the anonymity and confidentiality of the participants is addressed at all times in the study. On that note, nobody will have access to the information except the research team and the supervisor. All data will only be accessed by the researcher alone. Under no circumstance will anyone, other than the researcher, be granted access to the gathered data. This information will be kept safe in laptops that are password protected.

Research Outcomes

This study is of importance to the field of psychology as a vast numbers of families are involved with child and family services. Findings from this study will be beneficial to the field of attachment in foster homes, as this may be a possible route for parents to engage in to effectively assist the needs of the individuals involved in their care.The study will devisemethods which can be used to encourage child cooperation by utilising theories of contingency as well as effective limit setting. The logic will be to try and balance encouragement and limits.

This study will hence provide with the idea and understanding in regard to the perception of the foster parents concerning the care-giving that has to be given to the children for a better future, rather than providing them with a strict environment that would end up into a criminal record. This has also been expected from this study that its publication would also enhance the understanding of the caregiving authorities around that globe regarding the critical situation that has been faced by the children living in these care giver programmes. More specifically the pre-test would be providing the real picture if the perception that are acquired by the care givers before the 12 session psycho-educational programme. This perception will also provide with the reason which cause a gap between the children and the foster parents. After the completion of the 12 session of the psycho-educational programme the participants interview will then provide with not only the understanding created by the foster parents but also with the measures of the impact of this psycho-educational programme on the foster parents and their perceptions. Lastly, there is an exception of great deal change in the perception of these foster parents (Dominick et al., 2012).

- Find factors that are integral in the various attachments, i.e. secure attachment.

- Assess role of a helping professional in facilitating such relationships.

Costs

All costs will be met by the Foster parents.

Timetable

References

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Hong, J. S., Algood, C. L., Chiu, Y, & Lee, S. A. (2011). An ecological understanding of kinship foster care in the United States. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 20, 863-872. doi: 10.1007/s10826-011-9454-3

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