Good-Bye Baby Venus

Told in narrative form, this book chronicles the experience of the author, who is also a social worker, when she becomes a foster parent in hopes of providing abused children with the care and nurturing an overburdened social worker cannot supply. The author records the children's arrival, adjustment, acting out of abuse and abandonment issues, and their eventual painful departure. Mansfield painfully records the unsupportive network upon which her family and the foster children must depend for communication with the social service system. The book affords a personal look at the lives of three abused children, the effects of child abuse on their personality development, and the dismal failure of the foster care system to meet their emotional or physical needs.