Hi everybody, I am posting today to recommend a book that I was able to read in the last few months titled A House Between Homes: Youth in the Foster Care System written by Joyce Libal and written as part of a series titled Youth with Special Needs. The book is short and to the point and is formatted in such a way that it is an easy read. This is perfect for me as I am as busy as anybody and I don't have time to sit down and read a novel. The Youth with Special Needs series is a series of 15 non-fiction books, all around 100 to 150 pages written by various authors. Each book focuses on challenges that some youth face ranging from physical disabilities such as blindness to mental disabilities such as autism or mental retardation. This particular book in the series, as stated in the title, focuses on the experience that youth (and children) have that are put in to the foster care system for whatever reason. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and found it to be very informative and understandable. Here are a few of the reasons why I enjoyed it:Storyline: While the book does not claim to be anything more than non-fictional, I really appreciated the fact that before the meat of each chapter began, Libal started off telling the story of young Bobby and his sister Cara. While the story at times (especially the dialogue in the first chapter) was a little cheesy, the emotion was there and the portrayal of the events was as real as any fictional story can get. The author used the events that happened each chapter to Bobby and Cara to later describe the foster care system procedures, facts, and experience for the remainder of the chapter. All in all it worked very well. Throughout the book I felt bad for Bobby and Cara and I wanted to reach right in and take their hands to lead them to a better life. Some heart wrenching moments were the abuse and neglect that Cara received from her mother, the fatal car crash of their father right after he was about to take them home to live with him, and Cara's emotional trauma and struggles in school and fitting in. While this wasn't the largest section of each chapter, it was so crucial to the overall feel of the book and really tied everything together.
Informational Content and Value: If you are expecting a deep and highly academic book full of research data and a myriad of Greek letters and symbols that only fellow researchers can understand, you have picked up the wrong book. I personally have a hard time reading and understanding academic journals and research articles so this book was perfect for me. The book never seeks to change the views of the foster system or to offer anything new, the purpose of the book is to inform and it does so in an easy to understand way. The book utilizes headings and subheadings very effectively which makes it easy to understand and navigate. It also makes it perfect as a reference if you are looking to learn about a specific aspect of the foster care experience. There are some parts such as the Partial History of Foster Care found in the first two chapters (p. 18-20, 35-37) that are a bit fact heavy and less relevant to the overall book but it is good information just a bit tedious.
I really appreciated the sections about the experience and processes involved in foster care. In Chapter 3 titled The Discovery they provide an excellent list of what is required to be a foster parents and supports. Chapter 4 talks about the many different types of foster care and placements and also explains what I think is one of the most valuable pieces of information to know about foster care and kids: The Five Stages of Grief. While this was initially intended by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross for those who are dying or losing a family member to death, the book makes a phenomenal connection between those stages of grief and what children and bio parents experience when a child is placed into foster care. AMAZING! This information is so important to know becuase it helps those who are and would be foster parents to realize the source for many of the possible behaviors foster children are known to have e.g. Anger, Depression, Denial, etc. For those of you interested in the legal aspect of foster care there are two sections about that as well, Chapters 5 & 6.
Content Validity
Now, as far as citing and references are concerned, the book does a decent job of at in-text citations however there is not a reference list at the end of the book or chapter of the sources. It would've been nice to have those sources to be able to double check the reported findings with the research done however for the most part the book is pretty straightforward and factual. Obviously the introductions and the story of Bobby and Cara is fictional and is not pretentious in being non-fiction, but the rest of the book is comparable to a textbook in validity. I really appreciated the fact that the author gave reference in the appendix to other books about the foster care system that she suggests we read as well as a list of several websites that one can visit for more information. I couldn't find anything that contradicted research on the matter however I would have really appreciated more information about where they drew the correlation between the Five Stages of Grief and the experience of foster care.
Conclusion:
This is a nice and easy book which has very valuable information for the average person curious about how the foster system works and what the experience is like for youth in the foster system. You aren't going to find any mind-blowing new findings (although I was very surprised about the 5 stages of grief section) but then again the book isn't meant to be anything more than informational. For all you foster parents out there I recommend picking this one up if you have any questions about the process and experience of foster care, it is also perhaps a better guide for all of you looking to become foster parents.
Source:
Libal, J. (2004). A house between homes: Youth in the foster care system. Broomall, PA: Mason Crest Publishers Inc.
