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Home > Substitute Care Providers: Helping Abused and Neglected Children > Substitute Care Providers: Helping Abused and Neglected Children : Review And Monitoring
Substitute Care Providers: Helping Abused and Neglected Children
Review And MonitoringEvery child welfare agency should have quality assurance programs. In addition, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 provides that States receiving Federal funds for foster care must have their foster care programs monitored. One aspect of the Act requires that service plans for children in foster care be monitored on a regular basis through a foster care review system. The purpose of this review is to determine whether planning for children is directed toward permanency. Three types of review have emerged—the internal administrative review, the external community review, and a combination of the two. The administrative review is established by the public agency to whom the Federal funds have been appropriated for children in foster care. The review team is usually made up of professionals whose job it is to monitor the case plans of children for whom placement funds have been allocated. The community review board is entirely separate from the public agency providing services. Lay persons from the community are appointed to serve on this panel. Board members are neither employed by the State agency nor are they usually involved in child welfare work on a professional basis. Each system has its strengths and weaknesses. An administrative review board is more efficient, the reviewers are experts in the field, and recommendations can be expedited quickly. The biggest drawback of this approach is that the reviewers are employed by the agency whose cases are being reviewed. The community review board is free to be more critical of the agency involved, but the board members are less knowledgeable and may have been selected for reasons unrelated to their special competence in this area. Some jurisdictions have worked out a combination that they hope captures the best of each plan. Whatever the format, the goal and process are the same. The cases of children who are in foster care are reviewed using case record material; discussion with the professional staff who have been involved in the planning; and interviews with the children, their birth families, and their foster families. Active involvement and participation of the children and their families in the review process are always to be encouraged. The intent is not to review the professional decisions that have been made, but rather to assure that for each child careful attention was paid to the decision-making process, and that those decisions have attempted to provide stable caretaking and a sense of permanence. Another protection for children in foster care has come about through the development of the court-appointed special advocate (CASA) program. CASA volunteers work within the court system on behalf of individual children. These volunteers are trained in the basic tenets of child welfare and the role of the court and the agencies involved. On a case-by-case basis, CASA workers attend court hearings of children in foster care. They are there to make certain that the child's rights are protected and that agencies follow up in accord with the court's findings and recommendations.
This material may be freely reproduced and distributed. However, when doing so, please credit Child Welfare Information Gateway. |
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