[Graham]

I completely agree Lilathe. Sadly, the "risk" in placing a child with any history involving fires is often enough for workers to think twice about actively pursuing an adoption opportunity. I've been indirectly guilty of this. When I ran our State's first truly therapeutic foster care and adoption agency for many years we had a policy of not accepting a child with a firesetting history, for legal liability reasons. Of course if the history emerged later, or a firesetting event occurred (it happened for two families over 14 years), we did not give up on the child and worked intensively with safety plans and focused on the all-important underlying issues. The fire departments varied in their approach to the problem. Some used supportive education and others took the "scared straight" approach. As Lilathe rightly says, the extent of the prior planning that was involved is an important part of the risk asessment that any family and professional must do. I have to add that, personally, it is also the extent of disregard for the harm done to others that can be chilling in the extreme. I believe that therapy groups for children with the behavior, or propensity, could be very helpful in prevention, but only in the largest cities are there likely to be enough candidates for such groups to be available on a regular basis. Once again, residential care does not seem to be the answer. All the firesetters I have known, or had described to me, in addition to their original trauma, were also dealing with issues of resistance to parental attachment. Group homes don't help with that.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone.
Graham