Home Study Methods for Evaluating Prospective ...

Home Study Methods for Evaluating Prospective Resource Families: History, Current Challenges, and Promising Approaches Thomas M. Crea, Richard P. Barth, and Laura K. Chintapalli Every state requires a home study before the placement of foster children for adoption. This article examines the history of home studies, presents results from expert interviews on the changing processes and purposes of home studies, and explores current challenges for the field. The article also introduces the Structured Analysis Family Evaluation (SAFE), a uniform home study format that encourages consistent family evaluations across workers, agencies, and jurisdictions. The article clarifies how SAFE may address challenges facing foster care and adoption practice.

Thomas M. Crea, MSW, LCSW, is Visiting Clinical Instructor and Doctoral Candidate, Jordan Institute for Families, School of Social Work, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC Richard P. Barth, Ph.D., is Dean and Professor, School of Social Work, University of Maryland at Baltimore. Laura K. Chintapalli, MSW, is Research Assistant, Jordan Institute for Families, School of Social Work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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doption has long been part of American child welfare practice (Slingerland, 1918) and the centrality of its role has accelerated since the 1980s following changes in federal policy. Anchoring the practice of adoption is completing a home study, an evaluation required of each family that seriously seeks to adopt a child (Children's Bureau, 2004). Home studies are the process by which families are approved for adoption, and through which child welfare agencies identify appropriate foster or adoptive placements. Yet, little empirical research has been conducted regarding home study practices. Some consensus exists regarding the elements of a home study. The Children's Bureau (2004) identified the following common components: (1) completion of adoption preparation training by the applicants; (2) individual and joint interviews of parents, as well as of children in the family; (3) home visits by child welfare agency personnel; (4) health statements and documentation; (5) family financial statements; (6) criminal background checks; (7) autobiographical information; and (8) references. Whereas the home study process differs across sites in timing and intensity, the documents within home studies tend to be similar (Geen, Malm, & Katz, 2004). These include information about the applicants' home, neighborhood, employment, family history (including discipline techniques, and relationships with parents, siblings, and extended family), medical background, spousal and past relationships, children in the home, the type of children applicants are interested in adopting, and the worker's recommendation for approval. The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) adoption standards (2000) also specify this information to be included, as well as factors relating to applicants' emotional maturity, capacity to parent effectively, readiness to adopt, and reasons for pursuing adoption. Despite considerable consensus about these commonalities, adoption practices vary widely among states, counties, and agenThe authors thank Rosemary Avery and Marilyn Freundlichfor their help, as well as Kate Cleary, Jim Brown, and Rob Marvin of the Consortium for Children for their assistance in describing SAFE.

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cies. As evidence, the average time needed for home studies varied in five California counties from 14 hours to 75 hours (AUphin, Simmons, & Barth, 2001). The differences in home studies are evident both in effort invested and in outcomes. Variations in home studies across jurisdictions create problems for interstate adoptions, as states often question the quality and use of studies from other states (Freundlich, Hefferman, & Jacobs, 2004). Given the striking absence of current research on home studies, the authors looked to the general scholarship on family assessments in foster and adoption placements (Orme et al., 2006; Westhues & Cohen, 1990). These studies focus on the extent that the social workers' assessments, standardized assessments, or demographic variables are associated with intact placements. Yet, these studies do not explore agency practices, or how assessments are embedded within an overall family evaluation within home studies.

The History of Adoption Home Studies In some ways, the purposes and practices of adoption home studies have changed significantly since their first use in the early part of the 20th century. Still, they appear not to have kept pace with even more rapid changes in foster care and adoption services. Early 20th Century In 1900, no standards existed for assessing the fitness of potential adoptive families, with no requirements or structured processes in place either for preplacement investigation or postplacement supervision. The home study practices of the first specialized adoption agencies were criticized as having too much sentiment and too little science (Herman, 2002). By 1914, the first advocates of standardizing and regulating adoption practices emerged. These advocates emphasized considering the risks in adoption, as well as the importance of relying on the best available psychological and developmental sciences to ensure children's safety. Nearly a century ago, one agency instituted a 50-item checklist for each family prior to a home visit by the social worker. (Slingerland,

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1918). The core considerations in early home studies revolved around applicants' personal characters and habits, financial wellbeing, safety and appropriateness of home setting, and an overall prediction that children would find security and love in the home (Herman, 2002; Slingerland, 1918). Other factors included examinations of applicant's emotional well-being and motivations to adopt (Towle, 1927). Yet, systematic evaluations of families were probably uncommon. By 1927, one advocate bemoaned the lack of "standardized, specific, or intensive" investigations in selecting adoptive homes (Towle, 1927, p. 461). One of the rationales for creating the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) was that adoptive placements across state lines "made children especially vulnerable to shady operators and legal inconsistencies" (Herman, 2002, p. 348). In 1925, the CWLA began supplying standardized home study formats to all member agencies, with instructions regarding the minimum number of postplacement visits, the specific information required in home studies, and a "trial" period of at least one year.' Even with these standards, as late as 1937,22 states still required no investigations of adoptive families before placement, and assessments tended to be weighted more towards investigating the child's history rather than that of prospective parents (Colby, 1940). Mid 20th Century By the 1940s and 1950s, adoption professionals became convinced that standardizing adoption practices had not advanced quickly enough. CWLA members pushed both for a greater degree of professionalism and foradoption agenciesto receive accreditation to ensure safeguards for the adoption process (Herman, 2002). These efforts resulted in Standards for Adoption Service (CWLA, 1958), which among a variety of other factors, specified that home studies cover issues related to applicants' personality, emotional maturity, quality of the marital relationship, feelings about children and 'The term "home study" did not emerge until the 1950s. For more information, see The Adoption History Project at the University of Oregon, http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adoption.

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(if applicable) childlessness, readiness to adopt, and motivation to adopt. These factors, and other information—mutual desire to adopt a child, ability to love a child, and realistic expectations— were generally explored w^ithin the context of group meetings of prospective applicants and typically three individual applicant interviews (Fradkin, 1963). During this period, social workers and scholars also began conducting limited empirical studies of adoption outcomes and their relationship to home study processes. In a study of disrupted special needs adoptions, Davis and Bouck (1955) found that the majority were related to adoptive parents' deciding "adoption was not for them" (p. 21). They concluded that home studies must improve the screening of families. In a study of the reliability of home study decisionmaking, Brieland' (1959) measured interrater agreement regarding decisions to accept prospective adoptive couples, and found wide variability that was not attributable to differences between caseworkers and supervisors, gender, or practice experience. The agency with the highest level of interrater agreement required its workers to meet once a month to discuss standards and define "good" prospective families. Kadushin's (1962) comparison of special needs and conventional adoptive parents found that special needs parents had significantly more "eligibility barriers" than their counterparts, such as age, history of divorce or health problems, or having two or more children in the home. Interestingly, prospective parents with "marginal eligibility" demonstrated greater flexibility regarding adoptive child characteristics than those with "full eligibility." Kadushin concluded that agencies should make decisions based on functional qualifications like emotional stability rather than whether families appeared "ideal." Following the 1960s, interest in studying the home study process appears to have waned, despite evidence that the proportion of agency-based adoptions increased substantially from 1953 to 1975 compared with independent adoptions (Maza, 1984, as cited in the Adoption History Project, 2005). We located no studies

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published after 1962 that approached the quality of Brieland's and Kadushin's work. The professional shift away from a focus on home study practices is surprising, given the rapid increase in the proportion of special needs adoptions. We surmise that the professional shift away from examining home study methods may have occurred for at least four reasons: (1) an increase in adoption directly from the birthmother to adoptive parents through independent facilitators, not requiring a home study process (Daly & Sobol, 1994; Bachrach, London, & Maza, 1991); (2) higher numbers of available special needs children available through adoption agencies relative to interested applicants (Daly & Sobol, 1994), such that the professional focus has shiffed to recruitment of applicants and deemphasized screening (Cowan, 2004); (3) a shift in focus from the home study's use in decisionmaking to other aspects of the home study process, such as group training and preparation like PATH, MAPP, or PRIDE; and (4) a heightened interesf in the use of standardized assessments to predict and explain family functioning (Westhues & Cohen, 1990), emotional readiness for adoption (Prochaska et al., 2005), and foster parent selection (Orme et al., 2006). Consistent with the focus of this paper on home study purposes and processes, the next section explores current research relating to preparing and gathering information from families in adoptive placement decisionmaking.

Current Practices: The Importance of Thorough Information, Preparation, and Assessment The focus of adoption practice has shifted over time. The Children's Bureau (2004) listed three purposes of adoption home stiadies: (1) to educate and prepare adoptive families for adoption; (2) to gather information about the family for purposes of matching; and (3) to evaluate the fitiiess of the family. Similarly, in the most recent version of its adoption standards, the CWLA (2000) affirmed that fosfer and adoptive children are agencies' primary clients, and that "the agency's responsibility has also shifted from

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investigating families to educating and preparing families to meet the needs of children placed with them" (p. 5). This move towards education and preparation is reflected in adoption research in recent years. The link between inaccurate or incomplete child information with the risk of adoption disruption is well established (Barth & Berry, 1988; McGlone et al., 2002). This dynamic encourages agencies to gather as complete a picture as possible regarding the child, to prepare families fully for the stresses of adopting a special needs child, and to educate them about available services (Rosenthal, Groze, & Morgan, 1996). One of the purposes of the home study is to shape parental expectations to match the realities of parenting special needs children, in order to ensure successful placements (MuUins & Johnson, 1999; Reilly & Platz, 2003). Yet, even with a move towards more education and preparation, agencies are still charged with an investigative role in home studies (CWLA, 2000). Much of the research on this aspect of the process focuses either on the ability of family assessments to predict future outcomes, or more indirectly, the correlates of successful placements like being flexible and having good communication patterns (Westhues & Cohen, 1990). More recently, Orme and colleagues (2006) found that approved families with foster children showed fewer psychosocial problems as well as higher incomes, but that no other demographic variables significantly predicted approval or child placement. Although useful in illuminating who might be ideal applicants, this information does not highlight the best process by which to make accurate assessments of family functioning within the context of a home study. Scant research exists to help clarify how current home study processes might be improved and what changes are now underway in the field. To address these gaps, we interviewed nationally recognized adoption experts regarding what constitutes an ideal home study process. These interviews help articulate the essential elements of home studies in current practice, and identify current challenges facing adoption and foster care services.

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The Elements of an Ideal Home Study Researchers interviewed experts in the adoption field to elicit their ideas about the essential elements constituting an ideal home study, to illuminate past and current home study practices, and to point to future developments and the barriers that present challenges to effective practice. Questions pertained to the types of information commonly included in home studies, the essential information that should be included, and the use of home studies for foster and adoptive families in interstate placements. The 18 interviewees represented a wide range of experiences and were selected using a list of national adoption program managers as well as from researchers' personal knowledge of the field. Experts included adoption program managers from seven states, adoption directors and supervisors from seven private agencies, and four consultants with national clientele (many of these were formerly adoption agency directors). The child welfare experience among these experts ranged from 7 to 45 years, with an average of about 24 years, a standard deviation of 10 years, and a total of approximately 400 years. The semi-structured interviews lasted between 45-60 minutes. Researchers took notes during each interview, and following an informed consent process, each interview was audiotaped for later cross-checking with notes. Notes were then typed and grouped under each question subheading and compared to determine the emergence of themes. We focus here on findings related to how home studies have changed over time, their purposes and common elements, and current challenges to the field. Most of the experts indicated that home study practices had changed considerably during the course of their careers, and have become more detailed and focused on the "investigative process with families." Earlier studies were brief assessments and "mostly only gave a description of the family to make sure (they) met a certain standard of income and type of home." Currently, home studies tend to be "more intrusive," asking "a lot of intimate ques-

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tions/' to "delve into more personal issues." One respondent stated, "We have seen more thorough home studies address more issues in their life. We also have emphasized more how a child's needs works with a couple's ability to care for a child." Although some experts saw little change in home study practices, most agreed that studies were more thorough, and that this change was necessary to examine how applicants might react to special needs issues. Experts reported that this deeper analysis of families should examine parents' experience and comfort with children. Experts often pointed to the importance of having realistic expectations, and the extent to which expectations for children's behavior match the realities of adopting children with special needs. At the same time, these experts perceived a change in how families are screened during the adoption home study process. Experts preferred the terminology of "screening in" applicants. In part, this change reflects chan'ges in the characteristics of available children and the families coming forward to adopt. One respondent pointed to a decrease in voluntary relinquishments of children to agencies, and a higher proportion of adoptions from foster care. Another indicated that earlier in her career, applicants were screened out in higher numbers, but as more special needs children needed placements, the criteria changed: "There was a lot of screening out of families who didn't meet...certain standards. There were no gay families, no single families, or no families with incomes below a certain level.... There was a whole change of thinking and we found that ... we needed to look outside of that certain standard." Yet, while these practices evolved, their purposes appear to remain fairly consistent, namely that families should meet basic requirements to provide safe and stable homes for children. All of the experts identified basic information to be included in home studies, namely demographic information, families' experience and comfort with children, physical descriptions of the home and environment, health and medical issues, and employment and financial information. Experts also identified crucial sources of

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information for making an informed family evaluation: criminal history and background checks, references, other relatives, and all related children living in or out of the home. Experts indicated that applicants' motivations to adopt or foster a child must be explicitly addressed. Virtually all of the experts mentioned or emphasized the importance of exploring applicants' motivations to foster or adopt. This exploration is consistent with the professional attitude that agencies "find families for children," and that when applicants' motivations are "unclear, this will raise a red flag." Yet, experts provided little specificity about wrong motivations or how to detect them. The concern over applicants' motivations reflects a larger issue in adoption home studies, namely the importance of self-assessment in family evaluations. Many of the experts stated that a study in which a family appears "too perfect" often offers little regarding how families' have dealt with challenges in the past. Home studies thus serve a dual purpose: to "evaluate the families themselves, their capabilities, skills and knowledge to parent a special needs child;" and "to help the family make the decision themselves if they have the experiences and skills to be a parent." In this sense, applicants' past problems or issues are of less concern than the extent to which those past concerns affect applicants' current functioning. This group of experts expressed more interest in how families dealt with their problems than the problems per se, viewing information about the problemsolving process as a predictor of how families will address the challenges introduced into their family by a child's special needs. According to many experts, an evolving issue in child welfare practice is the differential use of home studies for foster or adoptive families. Historically, foster families were licensed with little review of their appropriateness for adoption. Now, home studies are likely to be used more broadly but may still vary in that a family is viewed as a temporary or permanent placement for a child: "Foster care is intended to be temporary in most cases. The issues are to work with a foster parent and assess how well they can let go. In adoption.. .the focus (is) on the need to stick with the child all down

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the road through all different experiences." Given that adoptive fan\ilies are permanent, home studies also need to assess the level of families' social supports, as well as contingency plans for children's care in the future should something happen to the parents. States differ in the strategies with which these differences are handled. According to the respondents, some states conduct a "universal assessment" for both types of applicants, with the belief that "every person caring for a child with special needs should meet the same standards" regardless of their intentions to foster or adopt. Other states are engineering ways to target them separately. One strategy is to conduct a "progressive" format in which all families are approved as foster families, and can then undergo an "enhanced" study to be approved as adoptive families. For states in which adoptive and foster home studies are based on different formats, experts indicated that the major differences focus on families' motivations either to foster or adopt, and their abilities and resources to make short- or long-term commitments to children. Experts also raised an emerging issue introduced by varied state requirements in providing critical information about adoptive families. As an example, several experts pointed to the difficulty workers have in obtaining criminal background histories for families who lived in another state prior to relocating. Workers may spend considerable time and resources in tracking down child welfare service and criminal records from other states, and some states are unwilling to provide this information to outside agencies. Most experts agreed that the lack of this critical information seriously impinges workers' abilities to conduct a good home study. Another challenge related to interstate differences is the speed of the interstate adoption process. Many experts stated that home studies are an integral component of the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC). Yet, interstate differences in the type of information included complicate the matching process with the potential of lengthening the time a child waits for a permanent placement. As one expert stated, when children are forced to wait for a permanent home, states risk becoming out of compli-

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ance with the mandates for timely adoptions stipulated by the federal Child and Family Service Review (CFSR) measures. Most states have different requirements for home studies and different policies regarding the sharing of information across jurisdictions. When asked, most of our interviewed experts agreed that promoting a uniform home study format would help the interstate adoption process, by equitably considering families for children over state lines. Although experts were not asked about this approach specifically, one likely candidate for such a format is the Structured Family Analysis Evaluation (SAFE), a home study format currently being used in a number of states to promote uniform and efficient assessments of prospective foster and adoptive families. Structured Analysis Family Evaluation (SAFE) Structured Analysis Family Evaluation (SAFE©) is an adoption home study methodology designed to achieve the following goals: (1) create a uniform home study methodology to pursue standardization across sites; (2) promote greater worker efficiency; (3) psychosocially evaluate families within the home study; and (4) create a format for more thorough assessments of families than in conventional formats. The result is a uniform home study report that contains descriptive information about a family and a comprehensive psychosocial evaluation that identifies specific family strengths and issues of concern. The work culminating in SAFE began in 1991 in California's State Adoption Agency. Its early foundation was the Family Assessment Form (McCroskey & Meezan, 1997). Over a period of 12 years, SAFE was developed to encompass conversion foster-adoptions (child-specific), studies of unmatched families (both couples and singles), and foster care licensing including a focus on concurrent planning. Most of California's 58 counties currently use SAFE. In 2004, the Consortium for Children received a Federal grant to expand SAFE implementation and evaluate its performance. The states of Nevada, New Jersey, Colorado, Rhode Island, Utah, Tennessee, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Maryland use or are in the process of implementing SAFE. Three Canadian Provinces are also using SAFE:

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British Columbia, Ontario, and Nova Scotia. In almost all of these jurisdictions, SAFE is being used for child-specific, dependency, and infant adoptions, as well as for foster care placements and kinship studies. Questionnaires have been translated into Spanish and French, and SAFE practice values emphasize engaging clients in a culturally sensitive manner. Researchers through the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Maryland at Baltimore are evaluating SAFE'S effectiveness. This external, multisite evaluation includes surveys and focus groups of foster care and adoption workers and supervisors to measure perceptions of SAFE'S thoroughness and effectiveness compared with traditional home study methods. Data collection is currently underway, and researchers expect results to be available beginning in the fall of 2007. SAFE derives information about applicants' problem issues and behaviors, considering the particular vulnerabilities of children in care and the need for high quality parenting. SAFE gathers this information initially from tested questionnaires, prompted by research demonstrating that individuals tend to answer questions more truthfully on a questionnaire than during a face-to-face interview (Martin & Nagao, 1989). Staff members from the Consortium for Children provide onsite training that lasts 12 hours over the course of tw^o successive days. Trainees learn about the basic components of SAFE and have the opportunity to use the SAFE tools during the training. These trainees represent a wide range of experience and professional education, from those with and without graduate education, to all subspecialties (licensing, foster care, kinship, adoption, and case quality control reviewers), to supervisors and administrators. Workers trained in SAFE often report a "learning curve" using the tools in practice, and typically become rnore confident after conducting 5 or 6 SAFE home studies. Although researchers have not conducted a systematic inquiry, recent trainees have expressed their opinions that SAFE will promote "more consistent" and "more concise and thorough" home studies, and provide "fact based assessment, rather than just subjective assessment" (Jim Brown and Rob Marvin, personal communications, October 23, 2006).

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Basic Elements of SAFE The SAFE methodology has six main components: SAFE Practice Values, the Questionnaires, the Psychosocial Inventory, the Desk Guide, the Preformatted Home Study Report, and the Matching Inventory.^ The questionnaires support the social work interview as well as inform the SAFE psychosocial evaluation component. The psychosocial evaluation distinguishes SAFE from traditional home studies that generally do not contain such an analysis of family functioning. The psychosocial evaluation specifies considering families' strengths and issues of concern to be addressed by the social worker. One potential advantage of this tool is that it enables home study practitioners to analyze this information in a comprehensive and uniform manner. The Psychosocial Inventory contains 68 psychosocial factors divided into 9 sections that undergo evaluation, and the Desk Guide provides ratings for each factor in each constellation: (1) personal history; (2) personal characteristics; (3) marital/domestic partner relationship; (4) sons/daughters/others residing or frequently in the home; (5) extended family relationships; (6) physical/social environment; (7) general parenting; (8) specialized parenting; and (9) adoption issues. The Inventory uses criteria to be considered uniformly by every worker in every case to ensure that critical issues are not overlooked. The Desk Guide and Psychosocial Inventory provide tools intended to promote an objective evaluation by a caseworker, without forcing conclusions. Identifying issues of concern enables the social worker to articulate concerns to the family succinctly, and thus ideally laying the foundation for subsequent service provision and strategies aimed at problem resolution, strengthening family functioning, and preventing future problems. The SAFE Preformatted Home Study Report provides social workers with a uniform model to be used for matched and unmatched families. Two preformatted reports are employed: child specific and unmatched applicants. The first half of the pre'To find more detailed information on SAFE, visit http://www.safehomstudy.org.

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formatted written home study report contains identifying and descriptive information gathered during the home study process. The second half of the home study report contains the psychosocial evaluation narrative based on the determinations made using the Psychosocial Inventory. SAFE places a strong emphasis on the importance of the social work interview, in which the worker can gather information and make observations that cannot be effectively accomplished otherwise. The Information Gathering Tools are intended to provide workers with the ability to identify strengths and issues efficiently as the basis for an interview. The report integrates these factors and serves as the outline for the psychosocial evaluation narrative that provides an important resource for the improved matching of children and families. How SAFE May Respond to Current Practice Challenges The information gleaned from a historical review of the literature, as well as from expert interviews, suggests that recent changes in home study methodologies relate to the depth of analysis conducted in family evaluations and the extent to which families engage in self-assessment. Moreover, an increase in interstate placements presents issues when states have different policies regarding the content of home studies. The issue of thoroughness and the problems presented by interstate adoptions are linked. Recently, Freundlich and colleagues (2004) cited the need for states to be more explicit regarding their particular requirements for home studies, including the selection criteria used in adoptive family assessments. These authors specifically point to the importance of the home study in facilitating interjurisdictional placements: "From a practice and policy perspective, states need resources and tools to bring greater quality and uniformity to the interjurisdictional placement process. First and foremost is the need for a home study format accepted and used by all jurisdictions" (p. 20). Our experts agreed that a uniform format would likely provide equally thorough assessments regardless of the state of origin, and

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reduce the time needed to address disparities in the quality of studies. While empirical evidence awaits the outcome of the evaluation, in theory, SAFE is positioned to address this challenge by specifying the exact nature of the information to be gathered by workers. SAFE seeks to minimize decisionmaking variation and promote a more in-depth analysis of family issues by forcing workers to consistently examine families' histories and current functioning. As such, SAFE processes appear consonant with prevailing expert opinion on the importance of thorough assessments. SAFE does not directly address the importance of family selfassessment, and is not intended to replace group training programs such as PATH, MAPP, or PRIDE that explicitly encourage self-assessment. Concurrently attending training programs and undergoing a SAFE home study may bolster a family's competence to assess their own abilities, as most agencies require training of their families before the written home study process can begin. Also, the depth of analysis required by the worker may encourage prospective parents to engage in a deeper level of selfevaluation by asking such specific questions. In a number of sites, SAFE is currently being used as a home study format for foster and adoptive families. This practice reflects some of our experts' opinions that all prospective families should be held to the same standards in family evaluations. The concern expressed by other experts-that families have different motivations, depending on their intentions to foster or adopt-are included in the preformatted SAFE templates and are likely addressed further in face-to-face interviews with families and in group training programs.

Conclusion In current adoption and foster care practice, the home study process is designed to educate and prepare families for child placement through group training and preparation, to gather family information, and to evaluate applicants' level of fitness to serve as a permanent or temporary family through a formal assessment procedure.

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Scholars and experts point to the importance of thorough processes to gather and analyze information related to the likelihood of a child's safety in the home and the readiness of prospective parents to adopt or foster (Prochaska et al., 2005). The purpose of SAFE is to promote accurate family evaluations that operate in tandem with group preparation programs. In large part, while anecdotal reports have been positive, the question whether SAFE succeeds in promoting more thorough assessments cannot yet be answered. SAFE offers a major restructuring of home studies. The SAFE effort is indicative of a broad need for home studies to be revamped to respond to changing adoption and foster care dynamics and to provide agencies greater precision and efficiency in implementing this lynchpin of adoption practice. Such efforts, and their evaluation, are important to the future development of adoption. The field of adoption is changing more rapidly than the home study process. We envision that additional innovations in the use of home studies deserve testing so that this process can remain contemporary. Carefully studied variations from conventional home study and licensing requirements might also improve safety and quality while improving efficiency. In addition, having a structured instrument will allow researchers eventually to study the relationship between family responses on questionnaires and placement outcomes. The recent lag in research on home study methods has many origins, but one is the incomparability of methods used. These design and evaluation issues present challenges that the field needs to undertake. References Adoption History Project (2005). Home studies. Available online at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu / -adoption / topics / homestudies.htm. AUphin, S., Simmons, B., & Barth, R. P. (2001). Adoption of foster children: How much does it cost public agencies? Children and Youth Services Review, 23(9/10), 45-68. Bachrach, C.A., London, K.A., & Maza, P.L. (1991). On the path to adoption: Adoption seeking in the United States, 1988. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 53, 705-718.

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Barth, R.P. & Berry, M. (1988). Adoption and disruption: Rates, risks and responses. New York: St. Martin's. Brieland, D. (1959). An experimental study of the selection of adoptive parents at intake. New York: Child Welfare League of America. Child Welfare League of America (1958). Standards for adoption service. New York: CWLA. Child Welfare League of America (2000). Standards for excellence in adoption services. Washington, DC: CWLA. Children's Bureau (2004). The adoption home study process. Washington, DC: National Adoption Information Clearinghouse (NAIC). Colby, M.R. (1940). Protection of children in adoption. New York: Child Welfare League of America. Cowan, A.B. (2004). New strategies to promote the adoption of older children out of foster care. Children and Youth Services Review, 26,1007-1020. Daly, K.J., & Sobol, M.R (1994). Public and private adoption: A comparison of service and accessibility. Family Relations, 43, 86-93. Davis, R.M., & Bouck, P. (1955). Crucial importance of adoption home study. Child Welfare, 36(3), 20-21. Fradkin, H. (1963). The adoption home study. Trenton, NJ: State of New Jersey, Department of Institutions and Agencies, Division of Public Welfare, Bureau of Children's Services. Freundlich, M., Heffernan, M., & Jacobs, J. (2004). Interjurisdictional placement of children in foster care. Child Welfare, 83(1), 5-26. Geen, R., Malm, K., & Katz, J. (2004). A study to inform the recruitment and retention of general applicant adoptive parents. Adoption Quarterly, 7(4), 1-28. Herman, E. (2002). The paradoxical rationalization of modern adoption, journal of Social History, 36(2), 339-385. Kadushin, A. (1962). A study of adoptive parents of hard-to-place children. Social Casework, 43, 227-233. Martin, C.L., & Nagao, D.H. (1989). Some effects of computerized interviewing on job applicant responses. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74(1), 72-80. Maza, P.L. (1984). Adoption trends: 1944-1975. Available online at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu / -adoption / archive / MazaAT.htm.

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McCroskey, J., & Meezan, W. (1997). Family preservation and family functioning. Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of America. MuUins, E.S., & Johnson, L. (1999). The role of birth/previously adopted children in families choosing to adopt children with special needs. Child Welfare, 78(5), 579-591. Orme, J.G., Buehler, C, Rhodes, K.W., Cox, M.E., McSurdy, M., & Cuddeback, G. (2006). Parental and familial characteristics used in the selection of foster families. Children and Youth Services Review, 28, 396-421.

Prochaska, J.M., Paiva, A.L., Padula, J.A., Prochaska, J.O., Montgomery, J.E., Hageman, L., & Bergart, A.M. (2005). Assessing emotional readiness for adoption using the transtheoretical model. Children and Youth Services Review, 27,135-152.

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