Children Living in Kinship and Foster Home Placements

Once upon a time, everyone assumed that children would be raised in a home with their mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters and that they would remain at home until they married and moved away to start a family of their own. Is this story realistic today, or does it resemble a fairy tale? If it still has some validity, does it apply to all children or mainly to children in economically secure families, in which the traditional roles of father as breadwinner and mother as homemaker permit the children to grow up in a tight and secure circle of nuclear family, church, school, and community? Today, many mothers work, even in economically secure families. But how is this view of children in two-parent families currently altered because of never-married and divorced working mothers, who must arrange out-of-home child care for their children? What about children whose own parents cannot care for them and who then are placed in kinship homes or in foster homes? How strongly do we continue to subscribe to the ideal that children should be raised, whenever possible, by two biological parents? This chapter reviews the role of social workers in the child welfare field, emphasizing both the generic and specialized skills that this work requires. After describing some of the responsibilities of child welfare workers, several case examples will be included to illustrate both the challenges and the special rewards of this work. BELIEFS ABOUT THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE CHILD Times have changed, but many people still adhere to values inherent in a lifestyle of the past that no longer conform to current reality. However, the portrayal of children as safe in the bosom of the home was more of an ideal, rather than a universal reality. Certainly it was not applicable to many poor and immigrant families at the beginning of the 20th century, when many mothers worked in factories, on farms, or in sweatshops, sometimes bringing their dependent children to work with them. This belief about the importance of raising children within their family and cultural groups also did not prove true for those who ran the “orphan train” programs that removed thousands of immigrant children in New York from their parents between 1854 and 1930 and sent them to the country to offer the children the benefits of fresh air, good food, and a “wholesome” atmosphere—factors supposedly not present in their urban environment (Hall, 1992). Finally, this fairy tale does not apply to the single mother today who relies on limited public assistance to meet the costs of raising her children. The essential question, in the second decade of the 21st century, as in the 1850s, when the child welfare movement began, pertains to the relative importance of parental bonds as compared with other factors in determining the best interests of the child. Although some parents become overwhelmed and voluntarily place their children out of the home and others relinquish their infants for adoption, the majority of children in foster and residential placements are there because their parents have been found by the courts to be abusive or neglectful (Berrick, Needell, Barth, & Jonson-Reid, 1998; Children’s Defense Fund, 2012; Mannes, 2001; Kelly, 2014). “Children who are found to be neglected, abused, or at high risk in their family situations require specialized protective services from the community and its social agencies. . . neglect and abuse constitute the major reason for placement of children in foster care” (Brieland, Costin, & Atherton, 1985, p. 240; emphasis added). This continues to be true, with about 81% of children reported to state child protective service agencies being victims of neglect, 10% victims of physical abuse, and 3% victims of sexual abuse (Kelly, 2014). Neglect occurs when a parent or caregiver fails to provide adequate food, shelter, medical care, or supervision for the child (without any physical injury). Exercising the principle of parens patriae (which can be roughly translated as “the state as guardian”), the court uses its power to protect a dependent child by removing the child from the home and placing him or her in a foster home or institution. Approximately half of all children in placement are from minority groups, and many are recipients of social work services. Because of the number of children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic (Michaels & Levine, 1992) and the large number of children essentially abandoned by substance-addicted and incarcerated parents, it seems understandable that the number of U.S. children in foster care increased by 23% during the late 1980s and early 1990s (National Association of Social Workers, 1993) and by 35% between 1990 and 1998 (Children’s Defense Fund, 2000). However, these statistics changed in the first decade of the 21st century, with a 20% decline between 2005 and 2012 due to policy and practice improvements (Children’s Bureau, 2014). This trend did not continue in 2014, when there was a slight increase in entries into foster care. Parental substance abuse and other problems continue to interfere with the efforts of social workers to keep children in their own homes. When parents abandon their children because of addiction or are found to have been abusive or neglectful, grandparents may step in and assume child care because of their love for their grandchildren and their sense of shame, guilt, and failure about what has happened in their family (Tonning, 1999; Shapiro, Shapiro, & Paret, 2001b; Children’s Bureau, 2016). There has been a dramatic increase in the number of children living with their grandparents during the last few decades. According to 2010 census data, 4.9 million American children were being raised solely by their grandparents. This number is almost double that of the 2000 census (Makin, 2014). In 2016 the number of grandparents raising grandchildren was up 7% from 2009 (Cancino, 2016). This form of child care, sometimes referred to as “kinship care,” is most prevalent among children of color. Reasons for the growth in grandparent placement include parental drug abuse, teen pregnancy, divorce, single-parent households, child abuse and neglect, and the incarceration of parents. Kinship care may also be provided by aunts, uncles, and other family members. These arrangements may be either informal, with no court involvement, or those in which the court has granted temporary guardianship or legal custody. The focus of this chapter is on methods of helping children who are placed in foster care or who are being raised by grandparents and other kin. The value base of family preservation programs includes the belief that the family is the best context in which to rear a child and that the entire family, rather than the individual child or parent, is the client (Hodges, Morgan, & Johnston, 1993; Ronnau, 2001). Protective intervention through social services often comes at a late stage of a family’s problems, after heavy stresses have culminated in neglect or abuse (Brieland et al., 1985) and relatives may be unable or unwilling to assume care for the children. When a child has no grandparents or other family members who can provide care, foster care and small-group homes serve as necessary alternatives that do not necessarily have devastating effects on children but that do involve a complete change of residence for children, who are moved without knowing any of the people with whom they will be living. This chapter presents the challenge of helping children and their families when the children are living with family members or in foster care. Whenever family members are available, they must be included as partners in the helping process; when they cannot be located or when they are unable or unwilling, children will need to be helped to identify and resolve their feelings about their lost or absent home and relatives. A child’s sense of identity is connected to his or her family, and the process of helping the child requires that the family be included in work with the child, either in real life or symbolically.

THE IMPACT OF NEGLECT, ABUSE, AND PLACEMENT ON A CHILD 

Before proceeding with the discussion of placement alternatives and the various levels of care options for a child who has been neglected and/or abused, it is essential to emphasize the repercussions on a young child of growing up in a family in which his or her needs have been ignored and/or in which he or she may have been physically or sexually abused. As discussed in previous chapters, a growing child needs security, love, dependability, and consistent care—all of which may be missing or greatly deficient in the family situations being described in this chapter. All the components that constitute a secure attachment may be completely absent or insufficient for normal development for children in families in which their parents are addicted and whose primary focus is on seeking and using drugs. The children’s basic needs are ignored, and there may be little or no demonstrations of affection or other meaningful interactions between the parents and the children. In some families, the children are physically or sexually abused, thereby causing the children to lose trust in their parents and to experience elevated stress hormone levels due to fear and anxiety about their safety. The person who is supposed to love them hurts them. Studies have shown that parental abuse interferes with children’s normal development and their ability to relate to others (Siegel, 2012). When a child is moved from his or her parental home to a different location, he or she suffers multiple losses, and it is essential for the child welfare worker to be sensitive to these. A home where violence and abuse may have occurred frequently at least has a sense of familiarity lacking in a completely new environment. Placement with grandparents or other kin usually is more comfortable for children than a foster or group home with unknown adults. When placed out of their homes, children of school age often have to adjust to a new school environment with unknown teachers and peers, and this adds considerably to the child’s stress. Understandably, the child is removed from his or her parental home because it is considered unsafe, but it is important to acknowledge that there inevitably will be new stresses in the new environment, and this adjustment may take some time for the child to adapt to. The goal of making placement decisions “in the child’s best interest” can be very complicated and challenging.