Foster parents often feel irresolvable grief when a child they have loved and nurtured is removed from their home. Their grief response is frequently unrecognised and misunderstood, and can lead to problems regarding the retention of the carers on which the system relies. This article examines the challenge of retaining foster parents and describes the development of a grief awareness training programme for foster care and adoption workers as an effort to improve recruitment and retention. A one-group pre-test/post-test design was used to examine the difference in knowledge enhancement and understanding about foster parent grief after the training was administered to a sample of foster care and adoption workers.
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