Our project is underway. On August 16, 2017 we had a working meeting with specialists and family psychologists at the Baltiysk Child and Family resource centre.
The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the methods of psychological testing for the future foster parents and to estimate their efficiency. The Head of the department Margarita Sunyaikina and the psychologist Elena Kashaeva told about the work of the «Foster parents School”. There are some peculiarities of the work with potential parents in Baltiysk and its urban district. Some of the possible foster parents are people with rather high social status and they want to preserve the secrecy of the adoption or custody, that is why it is necessary to take it into account when group sessions with parents are planned.
The final testing of the future foster parents was conducted during the meeting. All other participants were offered to fill in the initial diagnostic tests used for testing substitute families and those who are just about to take care of an orphaned child.
EIena Romanenko, the psychologist of the Kaliningrad Child and Family resource centre, showed by a real example the method of identifying and analyzing traumatic events that become entrenched in parents’ minds as a factor that adversely affects the formation of parental competence.