ABSTRACT
In the field of child welfare, protective service workers, foster care workers, and adoption workers make daily decisions that have serious and far-reaching consequences for children and families. Workers and their supervisors must balance the conflicting elements of the protective needs of children with the inherent rights and capacities of birthfamilies. chmidt, Rosenthal, and Bombeck found that "Despite the information given the adoptive families verbally or in writing, in meetings with the foster families or residential staff, or through video tapes and observation, they expected a less difficult child". According to Ward, adoptive families must develop a sense of entitlement and develop appropriate warm and reciprocal family relationships. The worker is able to recognize children with very strong attachments to biological and/or foster family members and is able to identify and screen out adoptive families that have an issue with such attachment.
