Decision-making in foster care: A view on the dynamic and collective nature of the process

2020 ◽  
pp. 146801732092882
Author(s):  
Doris Chateauneuf ◽  
Marie-Andrée Poirier ◽  
Geneviève Pagé
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foster Care ◽  
Child Welfare ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Social Worker ◽  
Child Welfare Services ◽  
Foster Family ◽  
Her Family ◽  
Welfare Services ◽  
The Social

Summary Placement in a foster family by child welfare services is a crucial decision in the trajectory of a child. Nevertheless, the strategies and procedures underlying the decision to remove a child from his/her family for placement in foster care remain little studied. Based on 39 semi-directed individual interviews with social workers from child welfare services, the current study aims at highlighting how social workers come to the decision to remove a child from parental care, and how they choose a foster family. Findings The thematic analysis of the qualitative data collected reveals that four main components were raised by social workers to explain how they make their decisions regarding placement and what are the considerations associated with this process: (1) Professional consensus and collaboration, (2) Clinical and legal guidelines, (3) Risk assessment and clinical judgment, and (4) Personality and values of the social worker. The results of this study show that decisions surrounding the removal of a child from his/her family and the choice of a foster family are the result of multiples factors and strategies involving the social worker and other collaborating professionals, as well as their legal and administrative context. Application The findings suggest that additional efforts could be made in child protection organizations and agencies in order to develop supportive measures that take into account the collective and interactional aspect of the decision-making process regarding placement in foster care.

The New Deal, Family Security, and the Emergence of a Public Child Welfare System

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine E. Rymph
Keyword(s):  
Foster Care ◽  
Child Welfare ◽  
Social Security ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Child Welfare Services ◽  
Welfare Services ◽  
Public Child Welfare ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Security Act ◽  
The New Deal

This chapter addresses the significance of the New Deal to the development of publicly funded foster care and its relationship to the nascent welfare state. The chapter includes many first-hand accounts of parents turning to foster care because they could not provide both economic support and nurturing care to their children. The chapter argues that the onset of the Great Depression marked a setback for the delivery of child welfare services. However, the promise of a more rational system of federal welfare provision through passage of the Social Security Act and other New Deal programs raised hopes that economic insecurity for families could be so drastically reduced as to eliminate (or at least diminish) the role of poverty in separating children from their families. In addition, Title V of the Social Security Act also provided funds to develop state-level public child welfare services, which helped spur the creation of a child welfare infrastructure.

Identity Categorization of Motherhood in the Context of Drug Abuse and Child Welfare Services

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elina Virokannas
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Drug Users ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Child Welfare Services ◽  
Welfare Services ◽  
Individual Interviews ◽  
The Social ◽  
Help Giving ◽  
Female Drug Users

This study considers the accounts of mothers who have been using illegal drugs, have received treatment and are in the process of recovering. The data is based on 19 individual interviews conducted between May and December 2005 in two institutions for female drug users in southern Finland. The primary aim is to discuss the self-conceptions of the interviewed women as they related their experiences with social workers and the child welfare system. The study relies on the social constructionist view of identity as a self-construction created in situations of interaction and routines of everyday life. As a result, four different categories of motherhood identities and their connections to the various positions of child welfare authorities identified in the interviews of women with drug histories are presented: Responsible motherhood — asking for help, Giving up motherhood — submitting to outside forces, Strategic motherhood — learning to cope and Stigmatized motherhood — fighting back. Asking help from child welfare services was the only category in which the mothers were able to manifest responsible motherhood and co-operate with social workers.

Permanent Decision Making: Counseling Women for Sterilization

1982 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-81
Author(s):  
Judith Ross Goodman ◽  
Elizabeth Engeler Hiestand
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Social Worker ◽  
The Social

Recognizing that individuals make few irrevocable decisions in a lifetime, the role of the social worker in helping clients evaluate contraceptive and fertility needs is one of paramount importance. Practice dilemmas for social workers and issues generated by sterilization requests are pinpointed and examined.

scholarly journals In-home Child Welfare Services

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Foster Care ◽  
Child Welfare ◽  
Child Maltreatment ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Child Welfare Services ◽  
Child Welfare Service ◽  
Welfare Service ◽  
Welfare Services ◽  
Specific Program ◽  
Wide Range

In-home services represent a wide range of approaches to supporting and strengthening families that child welfare agencies implement to achieve the important outcomes of child and family well-being, safety, and permanency. In-home services are an essential component of the child welfare service system, but often receive less explicit attention in child welfare practice and research than other system components such as foster care, adoption, and child protective investigation. In-home services have been known by different terms over time, from services to children in their own homes, home-based, family-based, or family-centered services, family preservation, or others. Child welfare service systems differ considerably across states and localities, and in-home services probably demonstrate the highest degree of variability in target population, design, and implementation. New federal legislation, the Family First Prevention Services Act (2018), has renewed interest in in-home services. Family First creates mechanisms for states to access federal Title IV-E funds, the primary funding stream for foster care, to use for preventive services, but it also requires that these services demonstrate a sufficiently high level of research evidence of their effectiveness. With increasing emphasis on evidence-based practice, the field is challenged to implement programs and practices that demonstrate efficacy as well as practicality within the budgetary and bureaucratic constraints of public child welfare systems. This bibliography reflects a changing landscape for in-home services. The focus is on specific program models, and the extant evidence base of these models. Most are used with families who are receiving in-home services because the child welfare agency opened a service case due to an allegation of child maltreatment with the goal of preventing repeat maltreatment or the child’s removal from home. Some jurisdictions also use in-home services, including some of the specific program models described in this bibliography, prior to a report of child maltreatment, during the assessment or investigative process, or as part of an aftercare program to facilitate family reunification following a placement. Some attention is also given to in-home child welfare services provided when a child’s behavior, rather than the parent’s, poses a risk for removal. Included in this review are differential response systems, which numerous states have implemented to provide in-home services earlier and without formally opening a child welfare case; however, home visiting and family support programs of a more primary prevention nature are excluded from this review.

Self-determination and safety: an ethical crossroad

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Widian Nicola
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Social Worker ◽  
Healthcare Providers ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Community Safety ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Ethical Decisions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Life Circumstances

Self-determination is a pathway by which individuals can safeguard as well as define their sense of safety. However, when an individual’s sense of safety is placed at risk, particularly within the context of community, safety can become illusive. Due to safety’s subjective nature, social workers and healthcare providers are invited to examine closely the roles they play to uphold a client’s self-determination, as well as manage risk as instruments of the healthcare programmes we represent, within the context of community and amid our clients’ challenging and oftentimes complex life circumstances. These ethical junctures offer practitioners an opportunity to examine how personal and collective ethical decisions are made, particularly through the lens of the ethics of care, which aims to place relationality at the forefront of the decision-making process. This clinical ethnographic narrative examines several ethical junctures I faced as the social worker to an elderly client diagnosed with schizophrenia.

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