Honors Program Theses

Award/Availability

Open Access Honors Program Thesis

First Advisor

Lindsey Squires, Honors Thesis Advisor

Keywords

Foster children--Education; Literacy--Study and teaching--United States;

Abstract

At any given time, there are about 443,000 children in foster care system in the United States (Morton, 2015). When children reside in a home that lacks temporary stability or safety, foster care is a family-supported service to ensure children are placed in safe and stable homes (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, n.d.). At no fault to their caregivers, 35% to 73% of children in the foster care system experience language delays. This occurrence is significantly higher than the 6% to 15% seen in children who are not raised in foster care (Krier, Green, & Kruger, 2018; Stock & Fisher, 2006). Additionally, 65% of children in foster care experience seven or more school changes between elementary and high school, and as such, these children may easily fall through the cracks and have limited access to services like speech language pathology (Morton, 2015). Supportive services can potentially ameliorate children’s vocabulary development (Zuckerman & Khandekar, 2010). This project aims to put literacy tools in the hands of the foster caregiver, and support caregivers in gaining confidence in their ability to support the children they are caring for to develop language and literacy skills. Additionally, this project focuses on obtaining foster caregivers’ perceptions of a literacy toolbox in order to develop a high-quality literacy support for caregivers serving children in foster care.

Year of Submission

5-2020

Department

Department of Communication Studies

University Honors Designation

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation University Honors

Date Original

5-2020

Object Description

1 PDF file (30 pages)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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