Child Abuse and Foster Care
According to the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974, which was amended and re-authorized in October 1996, Child abuse and neglect is an act or failure to act resulting in imminent risk of serious harm, death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse, or exploitation of a child by a parent or caretaker who is responsible for the child’s welfare (DuBois and Miley, pg. 372). Child maltreatment dates back to the mid 1800s, with the case of Mary Ellen Wilson. Mary Ellen was abused and neglected by her caretaker, Mrs. Connolly, and when she appeared in court in 1874, she was wrapped in a horse blanket with lots of cuts and bruises on her body. This case led to the foundation of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a private-sector child-protection organization (Dubois and Miley, pg. 371).
Child maltreatment is usually categorized by Physical abuse, Emotional or Verbal abuse, Child neglect, and Sexual abuse. Physical abuse is a harmful action by a parent or caretaker involving punching, beating, shaking, etc. A way to tell if a child has been physically abused is if the facts about how the injury occurred don’t quite add up, multiply injuries, or delays in seeking treatment. Emotional or Verbal abuse is when a parent or caregiver behavior consciously intends to harm a child emotionally or verbally. A couple of examples are rejection, terrorizing, ignoring, isolating, etc. Child neglect is disregarding the child’s basic needs or being inattentive to the point where the child’s health and/or safety is at risk. Neglect has many different categories. For example, physical neglect, which includes abandonment or failure to provide for health care, educational neglect, which includes permitting chronic truancy or failure to enroll a child in school, and emotional neglect, which includes failure to provide adequate nurturing and affection or allowing a child to witness spousal abuse. Neglect often leads to mental, physical, or social health problems.
Last, there is sexual abuse, which includes a variety of sexual acts such as fondling, intercourse, incest, rape, etc., and is often silenced by the offender using intimidating threat and/or exertion of power over the child (Dubois and Miley, pg. 373).
There are many risk factors associated with child abuse, particularly sexual abuse. These risk factors include: Preadolescent age, female, presence of stepfather, absence of natural parent(s), disability, illness, or employment of the mother, poor parent and child-victim relationship, and parental conflict or violence. Also, if the parent or caregiver has a drug and/or drinking problem, that could be a factor also. Research has shown that the initial effects of child abuse include feelings of fear, anger and hostility, and guilt and shame, and increases the likelihood of involvement in prostitution and substance abuse (Dubois and Miley, pg. 375)
Foster care is one of the central intervention strategies of contemporary child welfare practice (Holland and Gorey, pg. 117). Foster homes are used to provide temporary, or short-term, living arrangements for children who have been maltreated or cannot stay with their own family for whatever reason. The first line of defense provided by the child protection system is to ensure that when a child abuse investigation yields information that children are being abused that decisive action to remove the children is taken ( Lindsey and Schwartz, pg. 5). However, the safety of the child standard used for removal is in itself problematic. Most children at risk are in what is known as the “gray area”, where they are not in clear, immediate danger of physical harm, but are from homes where their parental care is so poor that it is viewed as endangering their normal, healthy development. Furthermore, evidence has shown that removing the child from the home does not necessarily guarantee the child’s physical safety and that the child that is placed in foster or institutional care may be at risk of neglect and/ or physical and sexual abuse. Research has shown that children who have been removed from the home are at a high risk of having psychological, behavioral, educational, and social problems such as psychological disorders, adjustment problems, depression, and hospitalization, as well as low self-esteem and problems in intimacy and interpersonal relations (Davidson-Arad, pg. 2).
Foster care yields many challenges. Some of which are stress and health issues. Given that most foster parents probably start fostering with the intention of truly helping a child in need, perhaps if we could only better support their negotiation of various stresses, we could swing the pendulum toward continuity, and therefore, toward more effective fostering (Holland and Gorey, pg. 118-119). It’s no surprise that there is a relationship between child health problems, their familial precursors, and foster placement instability. Foster children whose parents used drugs or who have severe behavior problems are 5- to 9-times more likely to experience multiple foster placements over longer periods of time. And such placements seem to make existing behavioral difficulties even worse ( Holland and Gorey, pg. 120). They have a hard time fitting in with their peers, and/or trusting anyone. They might throw temper tantrums or engage in name calling and/or fist fights among other things.
A child is placed in a living arrangement outside of the home for many reasons. These reasons include: Parents’ inability or willingness to continue their care giving responsibilities, child endangerment that results from abuse or neglect, parents’ absence through death, abandonment, or incarceration, parents’ serious physical or mental illness, parental difficulties with alcohol and drug problems, and/ or children’s behavioral, personality, or physical problems (DuBois and Miley, pg389). Thus is why there are many different types of foster care placement. Among these are Formal Kinship Care and Independent Living Services. Formal Kinship Care is placing the children that require out-of-home placement with relatives. About one-fourth of all children in foster care in the United States were placed in the care of relatives in 2001. Kinship care is now recognized as the fastest growing sector of out-of-home placement (DuBois and Miley, pg390). Independent Living Services are used for older youths in foster care in order to ease the transition into independent adulthood. This program provides a variety of services, including life skills training, mentoring, support groups, and supervised apartment living for children who are “aging out” of foster care at age 18 in order to help them find work or to continue their education.
Family, in all of its forms and variations, is the foundational unit of society. The family rears and socializes children, provides a base of support and identity throughout the life span, and shapes future generations (DuBois and Miley, pg405). For this reason, Social Workers try to work towards keeping the family together and making it stronger. If possible, the social worker must provide intervention and support to the families so that the child doesn’t have to be removed from the home.
