The author discussed three major types of supportive services. Give two examples of situations you might encounter as a human service professional that would fall under these categories. What services would you recommend and what benefit would you expect they would provide?
THE CORE CHILD WELFARE SERVICES
In general, child welfare services fall into four core categories:
1. Services to support and strengthen families
2. Protective services
3. Out-of-home care services
4. Adoption services
Services to Support and Strengthen Families
For many children and their families, child welfare services involve supportive services that are provided to assist the family in remaining together. These services are designed to support, reinforce, and strengthen the ability of parents to meet the needs of their children. When a child welfare agency provides services to support and strengthen families, it does not assume the responsibilities of the parent. Instead, the agency supports parents in protecting and promoting the well-being of their children and strengthens parents' ability to solve problems that may result in the abuse or neglect of their children.
There are three major types of supportive services: family resource, support, and educational services; family-centered services; and intensive family crisis services.
Family Resource, Support, and Educational Services.
These services, which are broad and often overlap, assist adults in their roles as parents. Resource services are varied and include, as examples, providing referrals for services needed by the family and helping with transportation. Support services are likewise diverse and include, as one example, parent support groups, often facilitated by the group members themselves. Educational services seek to develop parenting skills and often involve parenting classes where parents learn, among other things, children's stages of development.
Family-Centered Services.
These services help families with problems that threaten the well-being of children and the family as a whole. They are designed to remedy problems as early as possible. These services can include the following:
Family counseling;
Parent education programs designed to enhance parents' knowledge and skills;
The identification and use of social support networks that include individuals, groups, and organizations;
Advocacy to obtain services for families when services do not currently exist;
Case management services to facilitate access to needed services and coordinate multiple resources.
Intensive Family-Centered Crisis Services.
These services are designed to assist a family when a crisis is so serious that it may result in the removal of the child from the home. Intensive family-centered crisis services attempt to ensure the safety and well-being of the child and strengthen and preserve the family in order to avoid the unnecessary placement of children outside the home. Services may include crisis intervention counseling, alcohol and drug treatment, and parenting education.
Three specific services that can support and strengthen families are child day care, housing, and adolescent pregnancy prevention and parenting services. Child day care responds to the needs of children, families, and communities. Child day care can be provided in family day care homes, group child day care homes, and child day care centers and may be offered for part of the day, full days, or, in the case of respite care, twenty-four hours a day. Adolescent pregnancy prevention and parenting services have become an important component of child welfare services as the rate of teenagers giving birth to children has increased dramatically over the last decade. Child welfare services include education and referral services related to preventing pregnancy and services for parenting teenagers, such as parenting education and assistance in locating child care and completing their education. Housing services have become increasingly important as the number of homeless children and families in America and the number of children who live in substandard conditions have risen. Child welfare agencies help meet the housing needs of children and their families by linking them to public housing resources and social services and by advocating for more and better affordable housing.
Protective Services.
Protective services are designed to protect children from abuse or neglect (sometimes referred to as maltreatment) by their parents or caregivers and to improve the functioning of the family so that children are no longer at risk. The specific types of maltreatment to which child welfare services respond include the following (Katz-Sanford, Howe, and McGrath, 1975):
Physical abuse: physical injury to a child;
Sexual abuse: sexual maltreatment of a child;
Emotional abuse and neglect: emotional injury to a child or failure to meet the child's emotional or affectional needs;
Deprivation of necessities: failure to provide adequate food, shelter, or clothing;
Inadequate supervision: leaving children for long periods of time without access to an adult who can meet their needs and protect them from harm;
Medical neglect: failure to seek essential medical care for the child;
Educational neglect: failure to enroll a child in school or indifference to the child's failure to attend school;
Exploitation or overwork: forcing a child to work for unreasonably long periods of time or to perform unreasonable work;
Exposure of a child to unhealthy circumstances: subjecting a child to adult behavior that is considered "morally injurious," such as criminal activity, prostitution, alcoholism, or drug addiction.
Protective services are provided by the public agency-often referred to as child protective services (CPS)-mandated by law to respond to reports of child abuse and neglect and to intervene to protect children.
Protective services are offered to accomplish several purposes: to strengthen families who are experiencing problems that can lead or have led to abuse or neglect; to enable children to remain safely with their parents; to temporarily separate a child at imminent risk of harm from his or her parent; to reunify children with their parents whenever possible; and to ensure a child permanency with another family when the child cannot return to his or her parent without serious risk of harm (Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators, 1988).
Protective services include the following:
Case Finding and Intake.
The agency receives reports of child abuse and neglect. Reports received by protective services agencies generally fall into two categories: problems in the parent-child relationship, such as physical abuse, neglect, abandonment, the absence of the parent, or conflict between a parent and an adolescent; and problems that a child is experiencing, such as emotional difficulties, runaway behavior, failure to attend school, or physical problems.
When a report of abuse or neglect is made, the child protective service agency is responsible for investigating the situation. Contact is made with the family, others with knowledge of the situation, and the child. The agency will determine whether abuse or neglect has occurred (often referred to as "substantiation" of the report) and whether there is a substantial and immediate risk to the child that would warrant taking steps to remove the child from the home to a setting of safety.
Case Planning.
The agency assists families after abuse or neglect is reported and substantiated. At the heart of protective services is work with the family to prevent further abuse or neglect and to correct the problems that led to maltreatment of the child. The needs of the parents and the child are addressed through a range of services, such as extended day care centers and crisis nurseries to prevent further maltreatment; homemaker services; counseling services; and emergency caregiving services.
Court Involvement in Protective Services.
Decisions are made by the courts regarding where a child will live and the changes that a family must make. Protective service agencies seek court action when parents are not able or willing to make the changes needed for their child's well-being or the situation presents a danger to the child so that the child can be protected only by placing him or her outside the family. In these situations, the court will order the child to be removed from custody of his or her parents and placed in out-of-home care. Only about 20 percent of the cases reported to protective services agencies require court action.
Out-of-Home Care Services for Children
Out-of-home care services are utilized when the situation presents such a risk to the child that the child must be separated from his or her parents and placed with another family or in another setting. In these situations, the public agency responsible for protecting children will seek court action to authorize placement of the child outside the home. There are three major types of out-of-home care services: family foster care, kinship care, and residential group care. These services, provided as twenty-four-hour-a-day care, are designed as temporary services for the child while the agency works with the family to correct the problems that led to placement of the child.
Out-of-home care in all settings also includes services to meet the social, emotional, educational, and developmental needs of the child:
Family foster care. Family foster care is provided by adults who are not related to the child and who are licensed or approved as foster parents by a child welfare agency.
Kinship care. Kinship care is the placement of children with relatives. Many agencies consider relatives as the first choice for out-of-home care because remaining with family members is often less disruptive for the child.
Group residential care. Group residential care is composed of a variety of services. One type is group care, that is, living facilities located within residential communities that care for a small group of unrelated children, usually four to eight in number. Residential care, another type of care, is usually provided to a larger number of children or adolescents and involves highly structured, intensive, and planned therapeutic interventions for children and adolescents who have significant emotional or behavioral disorders.
Adoption Services
Adoption is a child welfare service that provides a new permanent family for children whose birth parents are unable or unwilling to provide them with the love, support, and nurturing they need. Adoption services meet the needs of three groups of children who need adoptive families: (1) healthy infants; (2) children with "special needs," such as children with disabilities, older children seeking permanent families, and sibling groups of children to be placed together with an adoptive family; and (3) children from other countries.
Agencies that provide adoption services identify prospective adoptive parents for children awaiting adoption; assess the ability of prospective parents to meet the needs of children waiting to be adopted; prepare the child and birth parent(s) for adoption; place the child with the adoptive family; assist the adoptive family in finalizing the adoption; and provide postadoption support services, such as casework services, linkages to community resources, and parenting groups.
EMERGING CHILD WELFARE ISSUES
Pediatric AIDS and HIV Infection
Child welfare professionals are confronting a new reality in the form of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS. Growing numbers of children are acquiring HIV from mothers who are themselves infected with HIV and, as a result, their lives are medically, psychologically, and socially threatened. Some of these children are "boarder babies," in hospitals awaiting homes because they are ready for discharge, but their parents are unable to take responsibility for them or bring them home. Other children who have been infected with HIV live with their parents, who cannot provide for them. In many instances, their parents are also involved with drugs, which compounds the problem. In addition to children with HIV infection, there are children who are not infected with HIV whose parents are dying, leaving them orphaned by AIDS. Child welfare agencies must be prepared to help through such services as placing the children with extended families or by finding adoptive families to care for them.
Child welfare agencies provide a range of services to meet the needs of children and families who are affected by HIV/AIDS. Some programs are community based and provide services to ensure that children who are infected with HIV receive the therapeutic, developmental, and educational services they need; help parents understand and manage the child's illness; and support the efforts of the child and the family to deal with the grief and bereavement issues that accompany the disease. Specific services may include information and referral for needed financial, medical, mental health, and social services; crisis intervention services when the immediate needs of the child place stress on the family; family therapy; and case management and coordination of medical and psychological treatment. For children whose families are not available or able to care for them, child welfare agencies provide specialized foster care-twenty-four-hour-a-day care by foster parents who are specially trained to meet the special needs of these children. Children who are healthy or who have been infected with HIV and have lost their parents to AIDS likewise need child welfare services. Child welfare agencies work with the extended family to prepare them to care for children who are attempting to cope with the loss of their parents from AIDS and provide ongoing supportive services to both the child and the family after placing the child. For other children, child welfare agencies recruit and train adoptive parents, offering a broad range of education and supportive services to ensure that adoptive families understand and can meet the significant psychosocial needs of these children.
Children with Incarcerated Parents
As our country's rate of incarceration escalates, child welfare professionals are encountering growing numbers of children who have parents in prison. We currently estimate that 1.5 million U.S. children have an incarcerated parent, and many thousands of others have experienced the incarceration of a parent at some point in their lives. As a result of parental incarceration and the criminal behaviors that precede it, many of these children experience disrupted and multiple placements, decreased quality of care, and an ongoing lack of contact with their parents. They are at increased risk for poor academic performance, truancy, early pregnancy, substance abuse, delinquency, and adult incarceration.
The growing number of children with parents in prison has serious implications for the child welfare system. Approximately 42,000 children with parents in prison currently live in out-of-home care, and we suspect that many more of these children have intermittent contact with child welfare services. The children of incarcerated mothers are particularly vulnerable because these mothers are often the sole caregivers and sole support of their families. Although most children of incarcerated mothers live with grandparents or other relative caregivers, they are at risk of placement in the child welfare system if fragile family caregiving relationships deteriorate.
Until recently, few statistics on children of offenders and very little research have been available. As their numbers increase, though, child welfare professionals are recognizing that this is a particularly vulnerable group of children. Consequently, there has been a recent movement to develop policies and practices that address their special needs. In particular, child welfare agencies are beginning to consider ways of identifying and gathering information about the children in their caseloads who have parents in prison, strengthening reunification and permanency planning services to those families, and providing specialized training to improve caseworkers' and foster parents' capacity to help children and families separated by incarceration.
Cultural Competence
Cultural competence is a personal and organizational commitment to learn about one another and how individual cultural differences affect how we act, feel, and present ourselves. The purpose of cultural competence is the sharing of knowledge about all aspects of culture (gender, religion, age, sexuality, education, and socioeconomic level), not just the racial/ethnic culture of people of color. Cultural competence is an enrichment process that allows everyone to share and learn. Cultural competence is part of best practice. To efficiently and effectively carry out all the processes that are encompassed by best practice, the cultural implications should be identified and integrated into organizational operations. These processes include the planning, organization, and administration of social work services; the establishment of state and local regulations; content training and teaching in schools of social work; in-service training and staff development; board orientation and development; fiscal planning; and community relations.
The child welfare field is currently undergoing rapid and dramatic change as it struggles to provide quality services to children and their families. One of the most critical challenges the field faces is the need to understand and respond effectively to striking changes in the multicultural nature of American society-changes brought about by the mixture of racial, ethnic, social, cultural, and religious traditions of the children and families who make up our diverse society. These changes, coupled with the demands of a more outcome-driven environment, a more punitive outlook by society on the families served in child welfare, an anti-immigration sentiment, and the impact of managed care, challenge today's leaders. Child welfare executives face the dilemma of whether to include striving toward cultural competence as an organizational goal, given the range of pressures that impact their agencies.
Currently, children of color are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system, particularly in out-of-home care and the juvenile justice system. Unfortunately, children of color remain in these systems for longer periods of time and are less likely to be reunited with their families than children of European descent. Children of color in the child welfare system are ethnically diverse and include mainly those of Latino, African American, Asian American, and Native American cultures.
A common characteristic among children and families served in child welfare is poverty. One in five children in America is poor. The ramifications of poverty-unemployment, inadequate education, inferior or nonexistent health care, substandard housing, and welfare dependence-all increase the likelihood that children in poor families will at some point need the services of the child welfare system.
A crucial issue raised by the increase in the number of people of diverse cultures in the child welfare system is the degree to which current policies, programs, and services are relevant to the cultural values, traditions, needs, and expectations of the populations served. The child welfare system faces a challenge to extend itself in support of the premise that provision of effective child welfare services is directly related to the knowledge and understanding of, as well as sensitivity and responsiveness to, the culture of the client population. This, as well as the formidable task of recruiting and retaining a qualified, diverse staff, presents not only challenges but also opportunities for more effective leadership, management, and service delivery.
Child welfare agencies respond to issues of cultural diversity in many different ways. Many child welfare agency management teams are aggressively shaping an organizational agenda that encompasses a broadened vision, expanded goals and objectives, and modified policies, procedures, and programs to better meet clients' needs. The management teams of these enlightened organizations are also attempting to raise their individual comfort levels by gaining an understanding of their own cultural backgrounds and biases, the cultures of others, and multicultural organizational behavior. These management teams are learning how to positively manage the impact of diversity in their organizations-indeed, how to celebrate and enjoy the benefits of cultural diversity.
Conversely, many child welfare agencies and management team members are reluctant to develop a personal and professional agenda regarding the diverse populations of children and families served by the systems they administer. Many see no need to address the subject of cultural diversity, often because of a belief that acknowledging cultural difference could appear to condone discrimination. This "one size fits all" approach denies the existence of the current pluralistic society in the United States, the changing face of child welfare, and the resulting cultural diversity that is an inevitable part of the day-today experience.
As child welfare professionals, it is our responsibility not only to understand but also to build a consensus around the best way to develop programs, policies, and practices that recognize and support cultural differences. Through the development and implementation of appropriate and responsive programs, policies, and practices, we can effect systemic change. The number of people of color living in this country will drastically increase in the next few decades. The problems we currently face in the child welfare system will only be exacerbated if we do not take the necessary steps to stem the tide of children of color into the system.
Substance Abuse
As the abuse of alcohol and other drugs has continued to escalate and growing numbers of women have begun to use illegal drugs, child welfare agencies have observed a significant relationship between alcohol and other drug abuse and the well-being of children. Dramatic increases in the number of child abuse reports and in the number of children entering foster care have been specifically tied to parental alcohol and drug abuse. Child welfare agencies are responding to record numbers of child protective service referrals concerning drug-exposed infants, many of whom may also have been infected with the AIDS virus and who may be medically fragile, and older children who have experienced abuse or neglect because of their parents' substance abuse. In all age groups, growing numbers of children who have been affected by their parents' alcohol and drug problems are entering foster care.
Child welfare agencies are called on to respond to the needs of families who require immediate and intensive help in resolving their alcohol or drug dependency. Agencies must also help families correct the problems that alcohol and drugs create for their children. Child welfare agencies provide services to prevent and intervene early in situations involving child abuse and substance abuse, such as outreach to newborns and mothers; referrals for needed financial, housing, and social services; child day care; and coordination with community alcohol and drug treatment services. Special services may be needed by pregnant women who are abusing alcohol or other drugs. Early detection, proper prenatal care, and medical and substance abuse treatment services can be mobilized to reduce the damage that alcohol and drugs can cause for both the mother and the fetus.
Child welfare agencies also meet the needs of infants and toddlers who were prenatally exposed to alcohol and other drugs and older children whose parents, because of substance abuse, have not provided the psychological, social, and developmental environment that children need for healthy growth. Child welfare agencies, through child protective services, assess the risk to children posed by parental substance abuse; determine whether the child may remain safely at home with the parent or should be placed away from the parent to ensure the child's safety; and provide or coordinate the range of health, educational, and developmental services that children need. Substance abuse, which is often a complex and long-standing problem, presents the child welfare system with special challenges to protect children, provide effective services to parents and to children who may have significant health and developmental needs, and plan for permanent families for children whose parents are unable to care for them because of substance abuse.
INSTITUTIONAL SYSTEMS
Child welfare services are provided by agencies in both the public and the private sectors. Services to support and strengthen families, out-of-home care services, and adoption services are provided by public child welfare agencies and private nonprofit agencies in the voluntary sector. Public child welfare agencies often combine the way in which they provide these services, directly providing some services and contracting with private nonprofit agencies to provide other services. Private nonprofit agencies may provide a range of child welfare services or may specialize in certain services such as adoption or residential care for children with serious emotional disturbances.
Protective services traditionally have been undertaken only by government agencies charged by law with the protection of children-child protective services (CPS) agencies located within public welfare departments; law enforcement agencies; and the courts. Although CPS agencies and law enforcement agencies both investigate reports of child abuse and neglect, CPS and law enforcement investigations differ. The CPS agencies are concerned only with child protection; their efforts focus on determining whether a child has been mistreated and whether the child can remain safely with his or her parents. Law enforcement agencies focus on whether criminal charges should be filed in response to child maltreatment. Family and juvenile courts consider cases arising from CPS and law enforcement investigations. The courts will, when appropriate, declare a child in need of protection; remove custody of the child from the parent(s) and place the child in the custody of the CPS agency, and approve the child's placement in out-of-home care. When the court has made such decisions, the court will periodically review the progress that is being made toward resolving the problems that led to the child's placement and the progress that is being made toward finding a permanent family for the child. When criminal charges are filed, the court with jurisdiction over criminal matters may also become involved in the case.