Foster Care
Exploring Child Welfare by Joan Shireman
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| Foster Care Topics |
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Always there have been children who needed care outside their own homes.
In the 18th and 19th century, institutional care
was the main form of care for these children. In the 1850’s a movement
began to place children in family foster care, rather
than institutions, so that their upbringing could more closely resemble
that of other children in the community. Foster care by the mid 19th century
had become a major resource of the child welfare system, a means of providing
temporary care for children until their own homes could again care for
them, or until a permanent home could be found. Currently there are approximately
500,000 children in foster care in the United States . The proportion
of these children who are African American or Native American is much
larger than the proportion in the general population, another
evidence of racism.
Placement
in substitute care involves major disruption in a child’s life,
and is appropriate only when the home presents problems so serious that
home-based services have failed to enable the parents to provide minimally
adequate physical, social, and emotional care.
The separation a child experiences can have serious mental health consequences;
these can be minimized through continuity in substitute care, through
visits with family, and through careful planning so that the child moves
to a permanent home (the former home or an adoptive home) as soon as
possible.
Currently, the foster care system is under stress. Demographic changes in
the second half of the 20th century have resulted in a severe
shortage of foster homes. With more women in the work force, and more
single parent families, there are fewer families that wish to foster
children. At the same time, increased poverty fragmentation, and violence
in communities, and a resulting failure to support family life, have
resulted in increased numbers of children needing foster care. As a consequence,
children are too often placed in inappropriate foster homes, are moved
too often, and too many are damaged by the foster care experience.
Improving the foster care system involves assessing the needs of each
child and deciding whether the child will best use traditional foster
care, kinship care, therapeutic foster care, or residential care. If
it is decided that foster care is appropriate, the child’s needs
should be matched with the capacities of the foster home.
The child welfare agency caseworker provides ongoing support to the
foster parent during any foster care placement, as well as forwarding
the progress in carrying out the plan for a permanent home.
Major internet resources on foster care
Casey Family Programs: The
website of a major child welfare organization with a focus on long term
foster care. Focuses on examination of critical issues and examination
of practice and policy:
Child Welfare League of America: A
major source of information and data about child welfare services. Lists
conferences, publications. The data system allows display of data in
varied tables to meet individual needs. Extensive catalog of publications.
Foster Kids Club: A website
for foster children, containing many contributions from foster children,
and creating opportunites for foster kids to communicate with each other:
Foster Club for Grownups
who Care; A website for foster parents, containing informative
resources on many aspects of foster care, news updates, information
on issues such as taxes, adopting a foster child, links to other
websites providing statistics and research (such as a Time Magazine
article, or books about fosteer care).
National Indian Child Welfare Association:
A website which contains material of particular interest to those concerned
with child welfare issues among the Native American population, Material
about conferences, newsletters, discussions of policy issues, presentation
of research. Contains information often difficult to access.
U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families,
Administration on Children, Youth, and Families, Children’s
Bureau: a major source of information and quite easy to use.
It contains links to the AFCARS data reporting system, as well as
fact sheets reporting recent statistics on all aspects of foster
care. Laws and policies are described. Children's Bureau program
desccriptions and funding announcements are on this site. Many government
publications can be downloaded.
Books on the history of foster
care
Brace, C. L. (1872). The Dangerous Classes of New York. New York,
Wynkoop & Hallenbeck.
Crenson, M. W. (1998). Building the Invisible Orphanage: A Prehistory
of the American Welfare System. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard
University Press.
Littner, N. (1950). Some Traumatic Effects of Separation and Placement.
New York, Child Welfare League of America.
Maas, H. and R. Engler (1959). Children in Need of Parents. New
York, Columbia University Press.
VanTheis, S. (1924). How Foster Children Turn Out. New York,
State Charities Aid Association
Video: The Orphan Trains--PBS home video
Major resources on foster care today
Curtis, P. A., G. Dale Jr., C.K.Joshua, eds. ( 1999) The Foster Care
Crisis: Translating Research into Policy and Practice. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press
Fanshel, D., S. J. Finch, et al. (1990) Foster Children in Life Course
Perspective. New York: Columbia University Press
Fanshel, D. and e. B. Shinn (1978) Children in Foster Care: A Longitudinal
Investigation. New York: Columbia University Press
Festinger, T. (1983) No One Ever Asked Us--A postscript to foster
care New York: Columbia University Press
Festinger, T. (1994) Returning to Care. Washington DC, Child
Welfare League of America
Hagar, R. L. and M. Scnnapieco (1999) Kinship Foster Care: Policy,
Practice, and Research. New York, Oxford University Press.
Hazel, N. (1981). A Bridge to Independence. Oxford, Basil Blackwell.
Martin, J. A. (2000). Foster Family Care; Theory and Practice.
Boston, Allyn and Bacon.
McDonald, T. P., R. I. Allen, et al. (1996). Assessing the Long Term
Effects of Foster Care. Washington D.C., Child Welfare League of America
Press.
Meezan, W. and J. Shireman (1985). Care and Commitment; Foster Parent
Adoption Decisions. Albany, NY, State University of New York Press.
Triseliotis, J., C. Sellick, et al. (1995). Foster Care: Theory and
Practice. London, B. T. Batsford Ltd.
Zimmerman, R. (1982) "Foster Care in Retrospect" Tulane
Studies in Social Welfare, V. 14
Children's voices
Folman, R. D. (1998) "'I Was Tooken.' How Children Experience Removal
from their Parents Prior to Placement in Foster Care." Adoption
Quarterly 2(2): 7-35
Johnson, P. R., C. Yoken, et al. (1995) "Family Foster Care Placement:
The Child's Perspective." Child Welfare LXXIV(5) 959-974
Kools, S. (1997). "Adolescent Identity Development in Foster Care." Family
Relations 46: 263-271.
Mallon, G. P. (1998) We Don't Exactgly Get the Welcome Wagon: The
Experiences of Gay and Lesbian Adolescents in Child Welfare Systems.
New York: Columbia University Press
Toth, J. (1997) Orphans of the Living: Stories of America's Children
in Foster Care. New York: Simon and Schuster
Weinstein, E. (1961) The Self Image of the Foster Child. New
York: Russell Sage Foundation
Wilson, L. and J. Conroy (1999) "Satisfaction of children in Out
of Home Care." Child Welfare LXXVIII (January-February
1999) 53-69
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