Title
Measuring Willingness to Foster Children With Disabilities and Special Medical Conditions
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-1-2013
Description
In this article, the authors present the Willingness to Foster Scale - Disabilities and Medical Conditions (WFS-DMC) and report results concerning its psychometric properties. The WFS-DMC is a new measure designed to accurately and efficiently assess the willingness of parents to foster children with special needs, in particular, disabilities and special medical conditions. The authors tested the WFS-DMC with a national sample of 298 foster mothers. Internal consistency reliability was excellent (α =. 90). With reference to construct validity, mothers with higher WFS-DMC scores fostered longer, fostered and adopted more children, and requested the removal of a smaller proportion of foster children. Furthermore, the mothers' WFS-DMC scores were unrelated to demographic characteristics. The WFS-DMC could help guide the decision-making process involved in matching children who have special needs with parents willing to care for them.
Citation Information
Orme, John; Cherry, Donna J.; and Cox, Mary Ellen. 2013. Measuring Willingness to Foster Children With Disabilities and Special Medical Conditions. Social Work Research. Vol.37(3). 169-178. https://doi.org/10.1093/swr/svt013 ISSN: 1070-5309