The Help with Fostering Inventory

This article presents a new measure of social support specific to fostering, the Help with Fostering Inventory (HFI). It was tested with a national sample of 304 foster mothers, and 111 foster parent couples. It measures help from worship groups (HFI-W), extended kin (HFI-K), and professionals (HFI-P). The HFI-W has excellent reliability for foster mothers and fathers; the HFI-P has good reliability for mothers, but was not tested with fathers; and the HFI-K has adequate reliability for mothers, but marginal reliability for fathers. Strong support exists for the validity of the HFI for mothers but not fathers; one or more subscales predicted important behavioral outcomes for mothers, including number of years fostered, number of children licensed to foster, intention to continue fostering, number of children fostered, and number of children adopted.