Foster parenting together: Assessing foster parent applicant couples

This study examined family and marital context, parenting knowledge and attitudes, and mental/emotional health in a sample of 99 heterosexual foster parent applicant couples to determine whether there were distinct sub-groups in the sample with regard to marital/family context, psychological symptoms, and parenting attitudes and knowledge; to describe those sub-groups; and to examine whether those sub-groups experienced different rates of approval to foster and placement of children in their homes. The sample included only applicant couples who completed all questionnaires and 30 h of MAPP training over 10 sessions. Due to sample size, we estimated one Latent Class model for marital/family context and psychological symptoms, and another for parenting attitudes and knowledge. Analysis revealed two distinct classes of applicant couples for marital/family context and psychological symptoms, designated as Problematic Family Context (PFC), 60% of the sample and Nonproblematic Family Context (NFP), 40%. Significantly more NFP were approved to foster and had children placed in their homes 14 months later. Latent Class Analysis also revealed Problematic (35%) and Non-problematic (65%) sub-classes for parenting attitudes and knowledge; however, both classes were about equally likely to be approved to foster and to have children placed in their homes. These findings underscore the importance of screening during foster parent training and suggest that the MAPP training was partially successful in selecting applicants with the most foster parenting potential.