The Leader's Guide is more than 700 pages of content and process divided into 10 meetings, which include advance preparation sections, three companion videos, handouts, and templates for overheads or flipcharts for each meeting. Handouts may be reproduced from Leader's Guide, or may be purchased separately (See Participant Workbook).
Partnering for Safety and Permanence - Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting (PS-MAPP) was the first comprehensive preparation and selection program for foster and/or adoptive parents to be developed since the passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act. Because PS-MAPP was created out of consultations with the National Foster Parent Association Board of Directors and years of experience with the MAPP (Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting) family of programs, it is in the unique position of helping agencies accomplish, through its foster and adoptive parents, critical outcomes essential in this new era of accountability.
Changes in child welfare practice and law require foster parents to team with the child welfare agency to assure safety, well-being and timely permanence for children and youth who have been abused or neglected. PS-MAPP helps agencies address the six family and children services review outcomes by directly addressing them with prospective foster and foster/adoptive parents:
Agencies that use PS-MAPP will develop foster, adoptive and foster/adoptive parents who are ready to work in a professional, team relationship with the agency to ensure safety, well-being and timely permanence for children and youth who have been abused or neglected. Foster parents who are prepared in this program will be more likely to provide emotional security for a child in foster care, or who is adopted through the foster care program. They are more likely to promote positive relationships with all the adults important to a child in foster care. They will be less likely to enter into conflict with parents of children in foster care. When foster parents are prepared to partner for safety and permanence, they will help minimize the traumatic effects of foster care placement on children and support a child through the placement experience.
PS-MAPP develops five abilities that are essential for foster parents to promote children's safety, permanence and well-being:
Because PS-MAPP is both a preparation and selection program, it includes the following family and individual assessment and development tools:
PS-MAPP Meetings: The 10 PS-MAPP meetings are designed to mutually prepare, assess and make selection decisions with prospective resource families based upon the family's willingness, ability, and commitment to develop and use five core abilities. Each individual learns specific, critical skills, which are practiced during the development process. The focus on skills-building ensures that preparation/selection workers can see the skills in action in order to document the skills in the homestudy. More importantly, the preparation/selection workers are trained to provide developmental feedback to prospective resource parents so that the parents can actually learn new skills or determine for themselves that they are unable or unwilling to perform the essential required skills.
Eco Map: The Eco Map, which was created by Ann Hartman, describes and assesses the family's sources and expenditures of energy. Each family completes an Eco Map. 1
Family Map: The Family Map, which was created by John Williams, describes and assesses the family's boundary, power and authority systems.2
PS-MAPP Profile: Completed by the members of a prospective resource family, the PS-MAPP Profile describes and assesses the prospective family's strengths and needs in the family's own words.
PS-MAPP Family Consultations: The PS-MAPP Family Consultations between the PS-MAPP leader and members of the prospective resource family offer private time for the prospective foster family and PS-MAPP leader to discuss strengths, progress and family needs, and plan ways to meet identified needs.
Strengths Approach – Strengths/Needs Assessments: The PS-MAPP program utilizes the Strengths Approach to family assessment and development. The Strengths Approach helps the PS-MAPP leader and family to focus on strengths related to the critical skills required of foster parents and to frame problems or challenges as professional development needs. Both PS-MAPP leaders and prospective resource parents are responsible for assessing strengths and needs.
Professional Development Plan: The Professional Development Plan is both a document and a process designed to mutually develop, with a family, a plan for the family's growth and development as a resource family or as a child welfare advocate, should they decide that fostering and/or adopting is not right for them at this time.
Summary and Recommendation: Although this document summarizes the PS-MAPP process of a prospective resource family, it is also a development tool in that the family and the PS-MAPP leader mutually negotiate its content. This document is designed to mutually create a summary of the family's behavioral strengths and needs at the completion of the PS-MAPP program and to clearly state next steps for professional development.
Each of the 10 meetings is three hours and concludes with a "Partnerships in Parenting" activity, during which prospective families identify important, positive themes from the PS-MAPP meeting and hear of real-life successes in fostering or adopting.
Meeting 1: Welcome to the PS-MAPP Preparation and Selection Program
Provides an overview of the purpose of the preparation and mutual selection program; clarifies expectations of participants, including licensing requirements or approval and introduces the five core abilities required of all resource parents. Familiarizes prospective parents with the legal requirements of foster parenting. Includes real-life examples (video and handouts) to help parents apply training information to case examples of children in care. Addresses two requirements of ASFA--well-being and permanence.
Meeting 2: Where the MAPP Leads – A Foster Care and Adoption Experience
Focusing on two requirements of ASFA–well-being and permanence–this meeting identifies strategies for keeping children and youth physically, mentally, emotionally, socially and spiritually/morally healthy. Features a sculpting technique that dramatizes the need for shared parenting. Also demonstrates skills specific to the foster parent role in permanency planning and alliance building. Parents practice with eight highly provocative case examples to determine the well-being needs of children and youth in foster care. Includes a strengths/needs assessment of participants' willingness and beginning ability to ensure well-being, safety and permanence for children and youth in foster care or adopted through foster care.
Meeting 3: Losses and Gains – The Need to Be a Loss Expert
Focuses on loss and practical ways to help children heal from loss. Utilizes and goes beyond the theories of Kubler-Ross to integrate new theories on loss and healing. Identifies ways to assess and meet the well-being needs of children and youth in foster care to ensure timely permanence. Examines the role of life books and the foster parent's role in helping children create life books.
Meeting 4: Helping the Child with Attachments
Helps parents learn how to build, rebuild and support positive attachments and support a child's identity and cultural connections. Participants continue to work with provocative and realistic case examples. Includes a strengths/needs assessment of participants' willingness and ability to help children with their losses and attachments.
Meeting 5: Helping Children Manage Their Behaviors
Examines realistic and often highly provocative behaviors in children who have been physically abused, sexually abused, neglected and emotionally maltreated. Provides a self-assessment of participants' discipline strengths and needs relative to children in foster care. Focusing on safety and well-being, identifies more than 15 specific techniques to help children and youth manage their own behaviors.
Includes a strengths/needs assessment of participants' ability to keep children safe and help them manage their behaviors.
Meeting 6: Helping Children With Birth Family Connections
Examines specific techniques for building alliances with parents of children and youth in foster care through practice of communication skills, teamwork skills and use of Life Books. Participants explore the Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA) and its amendment (IEP), as well as the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). Parents discuss and practice skills designed to keep children and youth connected to their cultural roots.
Meeting 7: Gains and Losses – Helping Children Leave Foster Care
Helps prospective foster parents consider the professional team relationships essential to helping children transition from foster care. Identifies specific skills for building partnerships and effective teams along with techniques for helping children move from foster care in planned ways. A video provides a demonstration of transitioning skills. Examines adoption and strategies for preventing disruptions and dissolutions. Includes a strengths/needs assessment of participants' willingness and ability to help children with their connections.
Meeting 8: Understanding the Impact of Fostering or Adopting
Helps participants consider ways to meet their own needs as they foster or adopt. Demonstrates ways to manage the conflicting needs of children in foster care and members of the resource family. Identifies how families can manage their energy sources and drains, and examines changing family relationships. Families learn how to use and develop their own mutual assessment tools, the Eco Map and Family Map.
Meeting 9: Perspectives in Foster Parenting or Adoptive Parenting
Explores the roles of foster parents and agency workers in shared parenting. A video focuses on keeping birth parents empowered and active in their children's lives and models effective communication skills. Participants practice using effective communication skills, especially in case and family conferencing to support concurrent planning. Participants begin their final strengths/needs assessment.
Meeting 10: Endings and Beginnings
This meeting closes the 10 meetings, beginning with a focus on the challenges to teamwork and partnership, such as false allegations of abuse and the challenges of foster parent adoptions. Participants share their strengths and needs, as well as specific ways they have grown professionally during the 10 meetings and family consultations.