General Foster Care Books
Featured Books
The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to Your Adoptive Family
Often the first book parents turn to when adopting a child past infancy or one “from a hard place,” Dr. Karyn Purvis’s The Connected Child is an invaluable resource for navigating confusing or challenging behaviors. With wisdom, warmth, and compassion, Purvis emphasizes building connection before correction, offering practical strategies that restore hope and energy to parents. Though especially helpful for foster and adoptive families, its insights benefit all parents seeking stronger, more healing relationships with their children.
Has Your Child Been Traumatized?
Psychologist Dr. Melissa Goldberg Mintz offers a practical, compassionate guide to understanding childhood trauma and supporting children through its effects. She explains what signs to look for, how to respond to behavioral changes, and when to seek professional help. With accessible tools and resources, this book equips families to navigate trauma with greater confidence, while fostering hope and resilience for the future.
More Great Books
The Foster Parenting Manual: A Practical Guide to Creating a Loving, Safe and Stable Home
Dr. John DeGarmo, a longtime foster parent, shares hard-earned wisdom and practical guidance on some of the most common challenges foster families face. Covering topics such as school support, managing internet use, and navigating birth parent contact, this book is full of real-world advice that is both clear and compassionate. DeGarmo’s focus is on helping foster parents create safe, secure, and loving temporary homes where children can heal and thrive. A highly recommended resource for any foster family.
The Children Money Can Buy: Stories from the Frontlines of Foster Care and Adoption
Part memoir, part analysis, The Children Money Can Buy follows Dr. Anne Moody’s lifelong work in adoption and foster care. Both a social worker and an adoptive mother, Moody offers a candid look at the darker side of adoption—such as profit-driven practices—while also highlighting progress like the growth of open adoption. With compelling behind-the-scenes stories spanning domestic, international, and foster adoption, this book provides an honest, nuanced perspective and is an excellent read for anyone exploring adoption.
Stranger Care: A Memoir of Loving What Isn’t Ours
This moving memoir tells the story of a couple’s journey through foster care adoption, filled with starts, stops, and the “complexities and injustices” of the system. When they welcome Coco, a newborn placed with them at three days old, the author discovers the joys and heartbreaks of motherhood—learning not only how to love deeply, but also how to let go. Written like a love letter to the child who could not stay, it’s a powerful reflection on belonging.
Welcome to The Foster Lane: Parenting Advice from a Coach Who’s Been There
Written for parents raising children who have experienced trauma, particularly through foster care, this book offers both encouragement and practical strategies. The author, a Certified Parent Coach, provides real-life solutions to the everyday challenges foster parents face—helping them move from simply surviving to truly thriving in their role. With compassion and insight, this guide equips caregivers to better support children in their care while also sustaining themselves through the ups and downs of the foster journey.
Trash Bag of Memories
Trash Bag of Memories is the powerful memoir of Jessica, a former foster youth whose adoption ultimately failed. Through vivid, often painful memories, she shares the trauma of a chaotic home life, the instability of foster care, and the struggle to survive. Yet her story is also one of resilience and hope, written to raise awareness and inspire change in the foster care system. Raw and honest, it offers readers a glimpse into both hardship and healing.
A Love-Stretched Life
Drawing from her experiences as a parent by birth, adoption, and foster care, the author shares honest stories about navigating the unexpected twists of family life. She offers encouragement for those living in the “messy in-between” of what they imagined and what is real, emphasizing the importance of connection and acceptance. Alongside personal insight, she provides practical suggestions for advocacy and hope for vulnerable children in the foster system and the families who love and care for them.
Now I Am Known
Now I Am Known is the inspiring memoir of Peter Mutabazi, who went from surviving as a street kid in Kampala, Uganda, to becoming a Red Cross worker, U.S. immigrant, foster dad, and single adoptive parent. With honesty and hope, he shares lessons on forgiveness, resilience, and breaking destructive patterns. His story highlights the power of love, second chances, and believing in a better future. Today, Mutabazi continues to advocate passionately for vulnerable children.
The Seven Core Issues Workbook for Parents of Traumatized Children and Teens
Written by two leading voices in adoption and trauma, this workbook explores the seven core issues—loss, rejection, shame/guilt, grief, identity, intimacy, and control—and their impact on families. Designed to help parents first recognize and address their own struggles, it equips them to better support their children. With clear explanations, practical activities, and healing exercises, it offers tools for guiding kids, tweens, and teens through trauma while nurturing growth, connection, and resilience for the whole family.
Raising My Brother’s Child
Drawing on over thirty years of experience caring for vulnerable children, the author shares nearly a hundred real-life stories that highlight challenges such as behavior management, attachment struggles, trauma, and breaking generational cycles. With a strong focus on practicality, each chapter concludes with clear guidelines to support parents raising children not by birth, but by love. This heartfelt and experience-driven book equips families with both encouragement and concrete tools for navigating the unique journey of foster and adoptive parenting.
Foster & Adoptive Parenting
Written by a foster and adoptive mom passionate about attachment, regulation, and trauma-informed care, this book offers both encouragement and practical tools for parents. With guided reflections, creative exercises, and journaling prompts, it helps caregivers process their journey while supporting their children. Designed for busy parents, it’s filled with quick mindset resets, nuggets of truth, and hands-on strategies for raising kids with trauma histories or neurodiverse needs—making it a supportive companion for resource parents.
Braving the Dark
Too often, the voices of former foster youth are missing from the conversation. This book amplifies their stories—narratives of hardship, trauma, and resilience—as they pursue and complete post-secondary education against the odds. Interwoven with both pain and hope, these accounts highlight the determination of young people forging a better future. The author also offers concrete ways readers can support change, making this an inspiring and practical resource for anyone who cares about youth in foster care.
Keep the Doors Open
Written by Kristen Berry—an adoptive mom of eight and foster parent to more than twenty children—this book offers an honest look at the joys and challenges of fostering. With raw stories of heartbreak, resilience, and unexpected joy, Berry shows that living in a foster home often feels like life with a revolving door: full of arrivals, goodbyes, and everything in between. Both practical and inspiring, it’s a must-read for anyone considering opening their home and heart to foster care.
Trauma-Informed Foster and Adoptive Parenting
If you’re parenting a child with challenging or oppositional behaviors, especially one with a history of trauma, this book offers practical strategies to help you respond with confidence and care. Drawing on his experience as a psychologist, counselor, and foster/adoptive parent, Dr. David Adams provides evidence-based tools that are both realistic and effective. A valuable guide for foster and adoptive parents—as well as the professionals who support them—it equips readers to navigate tough moments while strengthening connection.
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