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Home > Substitute Care Providers: Helping Abused and Neglected Children > Substitute Care Providers: Helping Abused and Neglected Children: Substitute Care And Permanency Planning
Substitute Care Providers: Helping Abused and Neglected Children
User Manual Series (1994)
Substitute Care And Permanency PlanningThe Washington Post in an editorial in September 1992 recounts the story of Robert, who entered substitute care when he was 14 months old because his mother had neglected him. He was returned to his mother when he was 22 months old, was back in care with a different foster family 3 years later, and subsequently was moved to yet a different foster home. At this point his mother signed an adoption relinquishment. The agency misplaced the relinquishment, inexplicably set family reunification as a new goal, and moved Robert to his fourth foster home. A year later he was in a group home, and the planning goal now read long-term foster care. At age 10 Robert was asked by a child psychiatrist to draw a picture of a person or play with puppets that looked like people. He refused. He said that you can't trust people, they die right in front of you. Robert's situation poignantly underscores the problems children have when they do not get consistent care. Permanency planning is an attempt to provide stability and continuity in the lives of children who come into substitute care. It means planning for children so that they are reared in families that have the commitment and the capacity to meet their developmental needs until adulthood and that offer the opportunity for lifelong relationships and emotional support. Most children are reared in the permanence of their birth families. If, however, families are unable to meet their children's needs and provide permanence, the first priority of the child welfare system is to provide services that may help those families to meet the needs of their children. It may be necessary for children to be cared for temporarily away from their families. Then the goal of the child welfare system will be to strengthen the families as quickly as possible so they can meet their children's needs and be reunited. If children cannot have their needs met and cannot be protected from harm within their families, even with community support and services, the child welfare system is responsible for locating another family that can do that job. The concept of permanency planning for children emerged in the early 1970's when professionals and the general public realized that many children were "lost" in the foster care system. Children had come into care because their families could not protect them or meet their needs. Agencies focused on helping these children adapt to foster care rather than directing efforts toward strengthening the birth families so they could care for their children. The temporary nature of foster care offered little security in a child's life and little continuity in his/her caretaking. Once involved in the system, it was not unusual for a child to be moved from foster home to foster home. There was no clear way for a child to leave foster care except to run away or to grow up. A foster home that was relatively stable and able to meet a child's daily needs was more the exception than the rule.1 Historical Perspective on Substitute Care Historically, our society has always been ambivalent about caring for dependent children. On the one hand, society has been moved by the innocence and helplessness of children in need. On the other hand, the public has resented such children because of anger toward the parents who bore them but did not rear them. The plight of these children, however touching, placed a burden on taxpayers who were now responsible for their care. These children were viewed as helpless waifs who should be cared for at a minimum of expense and trouble to the rest of society. Thus, two parallel approaches to serving these children developed—family foster care and adoption. The Development of Family Foster Care The concept of foster care emerged as an outgrowth from poorhouses and orphanages – institutions that were designed to care for homeless children at the lowest possible cost to society. Two factors brought about the shift to family foster care. First was the improved medical services that increased life expectancy and reduced the number of orphans. Second was the realization that many children reared in congregate care institutions were not well prepared to live in families as adults. When a child needed care outside the family, usually while the parents were struggling to find a way to bring him/her back home, family foster care came to be viewed as a more appropriate option than institutional care in meeting the child's needs. Today, relatively few children enter foster care for reasons of dependency. Rather, social problems, such as family violence and drug addiction, are directly related to the increased number of foster children. Although the number of children in substitute care declined between 1980 and 1985, most likely in response to the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (P.L. 96-272), that trend seems to have reversed. According to recent estimates, approximately 400,000 children are currently in foster care; by 1995 that number will exceed 500,000.2 Moreover, data accumulated over the past several years also indicate that an increasingly disproportionate number of children in care are of racial/ethnic minorities.3 Although foster care grew out of an attempt to rescue dependent children in orphanages, adoption service developed as a response to the desire of adults to have children. Historically, adoption has been linked to a family's need to secure an heir for a title, a name, or property, and, more recently, to meet the parenting needs of childless couples. Many adoption agencies came into existence to "solve" the infertility problems of adults affluent enough to support the agencies. Adoption has been generally viewed as a solution for infertility as well as a way to save a child from a poor environment. To further justify the separation of infants from their birth parents, a third function of adoption was identified – to provide a solution for birth parents who were unable or unwilling to care for their child. The Development of Permanency Planning With the publication in 1959 of Children in Need of Parents, the professional community was made dramatically aware of the deficiencies in the substitute care system.4 In 1960, Eugene Weinstein's study of children in foster care, The Self-Image of the Foster Child,5 underscored the importance of promoting continuing ties between children in care and their birth families to make the placements more successful. By the end of the 1960's, there was increasing professional concern about how poorly the child welfare system was planning and caring for children in care. Questions were raised about the lack of good decision making that brought children into care, or encouraged them to stay there once they entered the system. It was not until the mid-1970's that the concept of "permanency planning" gained recognition—largely a result of the "Oregon Project." This federally funded program demonstrated that many children in substitute care could either be returned successfully to their birth families or placed in adoption, provided there was the commitment and the concerted effort to bring about these results. The combined results of research studies and professional experience tended to indicate the following:
Advocates for child welfare reform had worked within the political process to change the system drastically. In 1978 the Children's Defense Fund published a study, Children Without Homes,7 which mobilized public concern about the lack of planning for children in foster care. The result was the first piece of Federal legislation to deal with the issues of foster care and adoption. Public Law 96-272, The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, was passed in June of that year. Three of the law's most significant provisions are as follows:
As soon as Congress passed the Act, States quickly developed plans to obtain the Federal funds. As a result, many children in substitute care were provided with permanent alternatives. Some of the children returned to their birth parents or were placed in the homes of members of their extended birth family. Still other children were adopted by the foster families with whom they had been living. Between 1980 and 1985, the number of children in foster care declined by 9 percent.8 The increased focus on case planning and case review activities mandated by the new Federal law also began to reduce the length of time children newly entering the system stayed in care. Since 1985, there has been a steady and alarming increase in the number of children living outside the home. From 1985 to 1988, the number rose by almost 23 percent. If this trend continues, it is estimated that by 1995 there will be more than 553,600 children in foster care placements,9 a 73-percent increase since 1980. Moreover, children are coming into care at a younger age;10 an increasing number are of color;11 and they are staying in foster care longer.12 In 1990, the Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families of the U.S. House of Representatives reported: "Since 1980, escalating rates of child poverty, growing numbers of births to unmarried teens, skyrocketing numbers of homeless families, growing substance abuse, a ninety percent rise in reports of abuse and neglect and now the deadly threat of AIDS – all interrelated problems – have placed increasing stresses on families and new demands on the system, jeopardizing its ability to serve appropriately children in need. Over a decade ago we were not even considering the impact of such problems on the child welfare system."13 The Development of Family Preservation Services Although many of the causes of the current crisis lie beyond the child welfare system, managing the care of children whose families are not able to fulfill their parenting responsibilities does fall within the system. Paradoxically, for many children the preservation of their birth families includes temporary substitute care or adoption. An alternate approach is to provide intensive, short-term, in-home services to families whose children are at imminent risk of removal. Even though most family preservation programs are relatively new, initial studies indicate that they are a successful and cost-effective way to keep children out of substitute care.14 For children in foster care, the task of the child welfare system is to preserve and strengthen their families of origin so that family reunification can occur. For children entering adoption, the task is to preserve their birth families as a significant part of their identity by including those families in a new kinship network. Although the adoptive family is legally responsible for nurturing and meeting the developmental needs of the child, the adopted child also always "belongs" to the family that gave him/her life. The perception of foster care and adoption as family preservation tools means that the professional must learn to define adoption and family foster care differently. New Definitions of Family Foster Care and Adoption Family foster care is a means of temporarily meeting the developmental needs of the child by providing him/her with substitute extended family care for a period of time when neither the birth parents nor the biological extended family can meet the child's needs. It is important to note the use of the term substitute extended family. By viewing the foster family as extended family, a new model of care was developed that altered the roles of all parties involved.15 In this model, the critical factor is the involvement of foster parents, who recognize the significance of the birth family to the child in care and who function as members of a team that is committed to reuniting the child's with his/her family whenever possible. Kinship care is a special form of family foster care in which the foster parents are members of the child's biological extended family. The reliance on a kinship network to care for children has long been a part of some cultures, and it is not unusual for relatives to assume the care for children when necessary. Child welfare agencies, however, have only recently begun to focus on kinship care. Currently in some States, more than half of all foster children are in the care of relatives. These relatives receive payment for the care, are required to meet certain requirements, and are offered services similar to other foster families. Although kinship care is being used extensively to relieve some of the pressure on the child welfare system caused by the shortage of foster homes, its complexities for the children involved are apparent, and its advantages are still being weighed.16 Adoption is "…a means of meeting the developmental needs of a child by legally transferring ongoing parental responsibilities for that child from birth parents to adoptive parents, recognizing that in the process a new kinship network has been created that forever links those two families through the child who is shared by both."17 This kinship network may also include significant other foster families, both formal and informal, that have been a part of the child's experience. Again, the term kinship network is significant. This definition recognizes that the creation of a new legal family by adoption, while transferring all legal rights and responsibilities to the new parents, neither destroys the existing families of the individuals involved nor undermines the continuing significance of those families. Rather, as in the creation of a new legal family through marriage, adoption expands the boundaries of the network to which all now belong. It also means that those involved have to negotiate relationships with the members of the family to which each belonged before the new family came into existence. Principles Underlying Substitute Care The approach to helping substitute care providers help abused and neglected children is based on the following principles:
This material may be freely reproduced and distributed. However, when doing so, please credit Child Welfare Information Gateway. |
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