Ashley Judd

JAMES L. DICKERSON, a former public and private agency social worker and case manager for the Mississippi Department of Mental Health in the area of adults with intellectual disabilities, is co-author of How to Screen Adoptive and Foster Parents: A Workbook for Professionals and Students, Screening Adoptive and Foster Parents: A Guide for Students and Professionals, and the bestselling Cirrhosis: An Essential Guide for the Newly Diagnosed, and Yellow Fever: A Disease Poised to Kill Again. He is the originator of the "Foster Parent Syndrome," a term that applies to the identification of the needs that applicants for foster children satisfy by taking in foster children. The syndrome was first explained in an article Dickerson wrote for the Journal of Ontario Children's Aid Societies. While working as a mental health caseworker, he wrote an innovative grant for individuals with intellectual disabilities titled "You've Got a Friend."