scholarly journals Every Adolescent Deserves a Parent

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale Margolin Cecka

This article argues that all adolescents, indeed all human beings, deserve at least one parent�one person who takes the good with the bad because that person�s life is intertwined with the child�s. The child matters to the parent in a way that a friend, nephew, or foster child may not. Child welfare professionals must never lose sight of this principle when they recruit, train, and maintain parents for adolescents. The parent can be someone who is already in the young person�s life or someone who has been unable to parent in the past, but is now ready to secure that bond. True parents are attainable for teenagers in foster care as long as child welfare professionals remember what they are looking for and are steadfast and creative in their efforts to find and nurture these relationships. Section Two of this article details the issues that adolescents face when they age out 5 of the foster care system. Next, Section Three discusses the obstacles adolescents face in attaining familial permanency. Section Four examines the aspects of successful adoptions, including the recruitment and decision making processes, in an effort to apply those principals to developing and maintaining adolescent permanency. Finally, Section Five concludes with the keys to successful adolescent permanency.

1976 ◽  
Vol 21 (7) ◽  
pp. 453-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther R. Greenglass

Summary The majority of one hundred and eighty-eight women interviewed after having legal, therapeutic abortions did not experience psychiatric disturbance. While women with a psychiatric history were more likely than their more mentally healthy counterparts to experience some psychiatric disturbance afterwards, the majority of those with psychiatric problems in the past appeared to be coping reasonably well afterwards. It was pointed out that factors and circumstances other than the abortion itself, but occurring around the same time, may constitute reasons for the subsequent appearance of psychiatric disturbance, such as suicide attempts. Finally, the grounds for legal abortion in Canada were questioned — particularly the artificial practice of compartmentalizing and labeling reasons for abortion as psychiatric and non-psychiatric. While such practices may facilitate the decision-making processes involved in reviewing applications for abortion, they do not take account of the full range of human and social need.


2021 ◽  
pp. 105-122
Author(s):  
Craig J. Bryan

This chapter argues that suicide can be more usefully understood as a consequence of decision-making processes that are vulnerable to environmental and social influence rather than a consequence of internal states or traits such as mental illness. Mental illness and emotional distress more generally are better understood as one particular context within which the decision to make a suicide attempt or not often presents itself, but this does not mean that mental illness is the only context within which this choice is considered. This also does not mean that mental illness causes suicide. The basic concept involved in the marshmallow experiment—decision-making under different conditions—has received increased attention in the past decade among suicide researchers. Studies reveal that the decision-making process of someone who almost died as a result of a suicide attempt was no different from the decision-making process of someone who had never attempted suicide, was not currently suicidal, and did not have a mental illness. This finding lines up with the idea that there can be multiple pathways to suicide.


Author(s):  
Alan J. Dettlaff ◽  
Dana Hollinshead ◽  
Donald J. Baumann ◽  
John D. Fluke

When children come to the attention of the child welfare system, they become involved in a decision-making process in which decisions are made that have a significant effect on their future and well-being. The decision to remove children from their families is particularly complex, yet surprisingly little is understood about this decision-making process. As a result, instrumentation has been developed and adapted over the past 20 years to further understand variations in child welfare outcomes that are decision-based and, in particular concerning the removal decision, in order to provide a more thorough understanding of the intersecting factors that influence caseworker decisions. This chapter presents research and the development and use of this instrument, drawing from the decision-making ecology as the underlying rationale for obtaining the measures. The instrument was based on the development of decision-making scales used in multiple studies and administered to child protection caseworkers in several states. This effort is part of a larger program of research that seeks to better understand decision-making processes in child welfare systems in order to promote fairness, accuracy, and improved outcomes among children and families.


2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 731-748 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iztok Rakar ◽  
Bojan Tičar ◽  
Maja Klun

Local self-government has faced a number of challenges over the past decade. The financial crisis has revealed new dimensions of the eternal question of financing self-governing local communities, while distrust and a lack of interest in participation in local democracy among the people have led to considerations of different approaches to public decision-making concerning local issues. A comparative overview shows that the question of the “perfect size” of municipalities is currently very relevant and aimed at finding dimensions that would enable the municipality to ensure both local-level democracy and identity and economic efficiency in the delivery of public services. The most popular tool for achieving this goal is the merger of municipalities, although other approaches also exist, including various forms of inter-municipal cooperation. Some forms of inter-municipal cooperation have already taken firm hold in Slovenia, although the question of the potential impacts of alternative forms of inter-municipal cooperation on the democratic legitimacy of decision-making processes and the potential of these processes for the developmental breakthrough of Slovenian municipalities has yet to receive adequate attention.


2020 ◽  
pp. 146801732092882
Author(s):  
Doris Chateauneuf ◽  
Marie-Andrée Poirier ◽  
Geneviève Pagé

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.


Author(s):  
Adrian F. Loera-Castro ◽  
Jaime Sanchez ◽  
Jorge Restrepo ◽  
Angel Fabián Campoya Morales ◽  
Julian I. Aguilar-Duque

The latter includes customizing the user interface, as well as the way the system retrieves and processes cases afterward. The resulting cases may be shown to the user in different ways, and/or the retrieved cases may be adapted. This chapter is about an intelligent model for decision making based on case-based reasoning to solve the existing problem in the planning of distribution in the supply chain between a distribution center and a chain of supermarkets. First, the authors mentioned the need for intelligent systems in the decision-making processes, where they are necessary due to the limitations associated with conventional human decision-making processes. Among them, human experience is very scarce, and humans get tired of the burden of physical or mental work. In addition, human beings forget the crucial details of a problem, and many of the times are inconsistent in their daily decisions.


Author(s):  
Catherine E. Rymph

The introduction describes aspects of the state of foster care today, noting that child welfare professionals in the early twentieth century had been optimistic that they could create a much better system than what has emerged. The introduction also surveys relevant work by historians that has addressed the history of inequality in the welfare state and the history of adoption, remarking that foster care is significant to both subjects but has not been systematically studied by historians.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 701-730
Author(s):  
Virve Toivonen ◽  
Jatta Muhonen ◽  
Laura Kalliomaa-Puha ◽  
Katre Luhamaa ◽  
Judit Strömpl

Abstract A child’s right to participate is one of the general principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (crc). It is an integral part of a child’s right to have his/her best interest taken into account as a primary consideration. Therefore, it is indispensable in the decision-making connected with child welfare removals, the effects of which on the child’s life are long lasting and profound. In this article we examine the perceptions and practices of child-welfare professionals in the context of children’s rights, especially participation rights, in two neighbouring countries: Finland and Estonia. The findings are based on a survey and suggest that in the context of children’s rights, legislation also has its role in making children’s rights a reality, both as a prerequisite for reform as well as in shaping attitudes. However, legal regulation is not enough – full realisation also reguires more information, education and resources.


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