Foster parenting should be considered as an opportunity to assist both the child in care and the child's birth parents/prior caregivers.  As a result of the important roles required of foster parents, foster parents should be recruited, trained and collaberatively involved as "professional parents."  Understanding the specific needs of children coming into the care of local Department of Social Services, means understanding the need for specific skills to meet the special needs of children in agency care.  Foster parent training helps prepare foster parents to identify, develop and enhance their parenting skills and to have greater knowledge of  available important community resources. Appropriate compensation is crucial to recruitment and retention of good "professional parents"/foster parents and should include not only appropriate financial compensation, but also the provision of initial and on-going foster parent training. This focus on foster parenting as "professional parents," not only increases the successfulness of the child, but also provides potential savings to local DSS agencies and to the Commonwealth.  Professionally training and providing ongoing training assistance to foster parents, allows foster parents to increase their abilities to maintain children placed in their homes, decreases the potential for placement disruption,  and hopefully decreases the potential placement of children in costly residential placements. 

     Foster care was never intended as a permanent solution for children needing substitute care.  This means it is important to always assess, reform and support needed changes in the foster care system.  Providing the most positive impact on the lives of both the children in foster care and their birth families/prior care providers should be our focus.  Training and supporting our foster parents as "professional parents," is an important step in providing this postive impact.