CHILDREN PLACED IN FOSTER CARE



How Do Children Placed In Foster Care Believe Their Needs Are Being Met?

How Do Children Placed In Foster Care Believe Their Needs Are Being Met?

Introduction

Foster care is a social service providing temporary care to children whose homes are unsafe because of child maltreatment or parent or caregiver incapacity. When the substitute caregiver is related to the child, foster care may be referred to as kinship care (Beckerman, 1998). Typically, the term foster care includes only children in the legal custody of the state or county child welfare agency, while kinship care may refer to any child in a relative's care, whether or not the state or the relative has legal custody.

Discussion

If a child welfare agency has placed a child in foster care, it must justify to the dependency court that the child would be at imminent risk of harm in the home from which he or she was removed. The state is required to make “reasonable efforts” to prevent the need for foster care, to reunify the family, and to find permanent family alternatives for children who cannot return home. Rules about circumstances that make foster care placement justifiable, as well as criteria for licensing and monitoring foster homes, are established through state laws and regulations. In most states, a parent may also place a child in foster care voluntarily. Federal law provides a national framework regarding the care of dependent children in foster care (Beckerman, 1998).

The foster care system has its roots in colonial period practices in which impoverished or orphaned children were indentured to families who could care for them and teach them a trade. Systems of indenture were later replaced by orphan asylums and then succeeded in the late 1800s by systems of “placing out” impoverished children from urban slums to host families in the countryside (Girschick, 1999). These systems evolved with changing societal standards regarding appropriate living conditions for children and accepted practices related to child labor, as well as with the professional-ization of the social work field. Over time, the focus of foster care shifted from orphans and destitute children to maltreatment of children by parents and caregivers.

Foster Care Settings and Foster Parents

Nearly half of children in foster care in the United States live in nonrelative family foster homes and another quarter live in foster care with relatives. The use of relatives as foster parents varies widely by state. About one in ten foster children live in institutions and a similar proportion live in group homes. Foster parents are usually recruited, licensed, and trained by state or county child welfare agencies. They are paid a stipend as reimbursement for the child's room and board, but are not salaried employees. Foster care payment rates vary with the child's age and needs for specialized care. Foster parents tend to be older than biological parents and about 40% are employed full time outside the home (Block and Potthast, 1998). While the median level of experience of foster parents is about 3 years, there ...