Fostering Health: Health Care for Children and Adolescents in Foster Care

Designed for use by pediatric health care professionals, child welfare professionals, and all others working to improve outcomes for children and adolescents in foster care, this updated and expanded edition of Fostering Health serves as a comprehensive guide to health care for this population.

Many children in foster care have complex physical, mental health, developmental, and psychosocial problems rooted in childhood adversity and trauma. Fostering Health helps pediatric health care clinicians and other professionals understand the needs of these children and how to navigate the systems impacting their health. With contributions from leading experts in the field, topics included are health care practice, culture of child welfare, adolescents and specific populations, system and practice challenges and solutions, and policy and advocacy.

In keeping with the latest science, this edition of Fostering Health incorporates the principles of trauma-informed relational health care into all aspects of caring for children involved with child welfare. Each chapter includes an equity lens, as well as review by people with lived experience in the foster care system--an important new addition to this long-standing, authoritative guide.