WHAT ARE WAYS THE FOSTER CARE LAWS NEED TO CHANGE IN ORDER TO KEEP CHILDREN FROM BEING MISTREATED?

I have to write the paper upon encourage care, as well as the ways laws need to shift due to the volume of abuse in encourage caring homes. Any ideas?

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

Michelle January 24, 2012 at 6:11 am

More unannounced visits to the homes to check up on the children. Less concern of money and more of the children that are being placed.

hsfromthestart January 24, 2012 at 6:33 am

The amount of abuse in foster homes? How much abuse is there really? You hear of excessive cases in the news, but given the number of foster homes, you don’t hear much about them. And some of the abuse that happens in them is actually done by foster children who learned to abuse while in their biological families. And a foster family who doesn’t follow agency guidelines may find themselves charged with abuse even though what they’ve done would never be labelled abuse in any other home–so statistics on abuse in foster families can be misleading.

*Keep time in foster homes brief
Kids aren’t supposed to be in foster homes for more than 12 to 18 months. This is best for the children, who need permanency for their well-being. But despite federal law, this often doesn’t happen. This leads to more anger and frustration and more potential problems. It also leads to fewer resources to deal with the needs of foster children. Since there’s already a federal law on this on the books, make a law to better enforce this, make fewer waivers, and penalties for agencies who don’t do this.

*Don’t overload foster homes
Some abuse happens because the state puts too many foster children together (abused children need more supervision, counseling, etc. to keep them from acting out as abusers to others in the house). There are laws and policies on how many foster children can be placed in a home, but often those are ignored.

*Change how abuse is categorized
Make sure that what is labelled abuse in a foster home is really abuse. Violating some policy that wouldn’t be considered abuse anywhere else, shouldn’t be categorized as abuse in foster homes. Make a separate category for low-level policy abuse.

*Don’t overload social workers.
Social workers are supposed to be checking in on foster children regularly. They are supposed to notice if the child isn’t treated well or is having problems. But they are often so over-worked that they can’t do the job properly. They don’t have time to follow up as they should.

*Expand programs such as GAL or CASA.
There are programs in which trained volunteers act as an advocate for the child, visiting the foster home, talking to the child, visiting the biological parents, talking to the social worker, taking the time to check out the case from all angles. I’ve seen statistics that show that children with such advocates are more likely to get put into a permanent, safe home, more quickly. In some cases recently in the news (Barahona, for example) there was such an advocate (GAL) who was ignored. In other cases, I’ve not heard of involvment of such an advocate.
If a new law were to be made, it would require the involvment of such advocates (and funding to recruit and train them) and would hold judges and/or social workers accountable for ignoring the concerns of such advocates rather than thoroughly investigating them. This would be the best solution, imo.

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