In The Healing Power of the Family, Richard J. Delaney, Ph.D., unravels the struggles of living with the foster or adoptive child who has traversed emotionally bumpy terrain. The book focuses on the child's feelings and needs, and how the child's fractured self affects families struggling to mend damaged psyches. Delaney, a practicing psychologist who works closely with social service programs, explains some of the complex mental health diagnoses that might be given to the foster or adoptive child. Then Delaney lays out case scenarios based on foster and adoptive families' real life experiences, in a simple format.

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The Healing Power of the Family is organized into several sections. The first section deals with the staggering numbers of children entering foster care and what those numbers mean for society. Section two addresses psychological and behavioral problems foster and adoptive children inherit due to maltreatment. The third section tackles the disturbed child's effect upon the foster and adoptive family. Chapter four gives family-based case examples and interventions that foster and adoptive families have used. And chapter five examines special issues such as resiliency, a child's search for birth parents and classic emotional triggers.

Social service agencies nationwide are experiencing a shortage of foster and adoptive parents willing to tackle the complexities of providing safe, loving homes to neglected and abused children. As Delaney notes, "Parents willing to provide foster care or an adoptive home to formerly abused children are an endangered species." Social workers working late into the night to find a suitable home for a child can attest to this.

Anyone working in the child welfare system will tell you the number of emotionally and physically abused children entering the system is staggering. Working with an emotionally fractured child can be challenging to any seasoned social worker or therapist, even those with vast years of experience and solid training. However, the daunting and complex task of mending a maltreated child often lies in the hands of foster and adoptive parents who take such children into their families.

Providing a safe haven that includes physical and psychological security is a basic need many of us assume is a right. Unfortunately, an abused child generally has not experienced a nurturing environment that meets developmental needs and provides strong attachments to loving caregivers. Children who have suffered emotional and physical trauma have great difficulty adjusting to traditional family settings. The emotional impact upon well-meaning caregivers can be debilitating, resulting in burnout. Delaney identifies the major sources of stress facing well-intentioned caregivers, and provides concrete strategies for curbing negative behaviors.

The Healing Power of the Family is a user-friendly, accessible book for families, foster parents, and professionals interested working with foster and adoptive children. This is an excellent resource that I would highly recommend to professionals and foster and adoptive parents. The information is clear, direct, honest, easily understood and laid out in a format that eliminates heavy psychological jargon that can sometimes bog down those providing care to disturbed children.

Throughout the book there is a great deal of discussion of how emotional scarring can impede the growth of a young child who has not been nurtured and loved. But the book also talks about how emotional scarring can disrupt the efforts of caregivers, as well. The goal of The Healing Power of the Family is to present clear and concise information in an accessible format for anyone working with an emotionally traumatized child. This is an excellent resource book packed with lots of information in a simplified form. The Healing Power of the Family
Richard J. Delaney, Ph.D.
Wood N Barnes, 1997
$17.95
ISBN: 1885473168

Nancy Duncan, MSW, is a social worker and child abuse investigator in the state of California. She writes about health, psychology, and social issues.