Welcoming Strangers

<p>Jane Hall Fitz-Gibbon and Andrew Fitz-Gibbon have cared for more than 100 children in a foster care career spanning more than three decades. They developed a method loving nonviolent re-parenting to best care for foster children. Re-parenting represents the complex task of caring for children who have been parented already often inadequately and mostly involving physical emotional and/or systemic violence.</p><p>Welcoming Strangers analyses the violence foster children suffer and raises ethical questions—why violence is morally problematic what philosophers have said about human nature and violence and what moral good should be pursued in childcare. Drawing on an ancient form of ethics sometimes known as virtue ethics this book focuses on the traits required to become a loving nonviolent re-parent.</p><p>The Fitz-Gibbons tell of their journey in the foster care system with candour humour and grace. Covering subjects as diverse as teens sex discipline and the carer's own well-being they describe the difficulties of foster care and the sometimes impossible task of restoring dignity and joy to young lives deeply damaged by violence. This book will be of immense help to foster carers adopters caseworkers case managers policymakers and any parent who wants to integrate nonviolent practices into the way they care for children.</p>