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From Private to Public: Paying Grandparents as Caregivers

Jill Duerr Berrick

in Raising Children: Emerging Needs, Modern Risks, and Social Responses

The high levels of divorce, separation, and single-parenthood in modern times have created daunting issues and hardship surrounding social/emotional and financial care for children in families ... More

The high levels of divorce, separation, and single-parenthood in modern times have created daunting issues and hardship surrounding social/emotional and financial care for children in families experiencing these struggles. This chapter examines policies that assist grandparents to step in and provide substitute family care for children who can no longer live in their parents' homes for various reasons, including parental health, maltreatment, substance abuse, and economic disruptions. This analysis cautions against policy measures that may inadvertently provide a strong incentive for low-income women to transfer their children's care to relatives. To soften these incentive effects, several adjustment to current policies are recommended that involve offering family stabilization grants to parents when children return home, monitoring subsidized guardianship arrangements, and eliminating the time limits on TANF family grants.Less

Comparative Safety, Stability, and Continuity of Children’s Placements in Formal and Informal Substitute Care

Mark Testa, Christina M. Bruhn, and Jesse Helton

in Child Welfare and Child Well-Being: New Perspectives From the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being

This chapter examines the growing use of kinship care as a placement option for children who must be removed from their homes of origin. It highlights the tensions between the recruitment of blood ... More

This chapter examines the growing use of kinship care as a placement option for children who must be removed from their homes of origin. It highlights the tensions between the recruitment of blood relatives and the selection of trained, licensed foster parents as agents of children's well-being. Although in principle, relatives can serve as licensed foster parents, in practice, state licensing requirements may disqualify blood kin because of, for example, cramped housing quarters, lack of a telephone, or past arrests. The important question is whether kin should still be privileged under federal law for public assistance and foster care benefits if they are unable to meet state foster home licensing standards. Drawing on NSCAW data, the chapter estimates the mean differences in some key indicators of bonding and bridging social capital across placement settings. It models the effects of these indicators and other demographic and economic characteristics on the outcomes of continuity, stability, and safety. It suggests that, with respect to these traditional child welfare outcomes, both formal and informal kinship care offer some advantages, while carrying no appreciably greater safety risks than foster family care.Less

New Permanency Strategies for Children in Foster Care

Mark Testa

in Child Welfare Research: Advances for Practice and Policy

This chapter examines the use of subsidized guardianship as a permanency alternative. It outlines an analytical framework for charting the broad cycle of public child welfare change in the United ... More

This chapter examines the use of subsidized guardianship as a permanency alternative. It outlines an analytical framework for charting the broad cycle of public child welfare change in the United States. It traces the origins of the permanency planning movement, and considers the latest round of debate being generated by the expanded public reliance on kinfolk and foster families for the permanent care and guardianship of abused and neglected children. It outlines the theoretical foundations of the use of kinship care as a placement resource of choice, drawing on an emerging body of evidence to support this position.Less

Take Me Home

Jill Duerr Berrick

in Take Me Home: Protecting America's Vulnerable Children and Families

The field of child welfare is gradually abandoning its mission to protect children. First by its over-enthusiasm for prevention services, and second by relegating to the private family the important ... More

The field of child welfare is gradually abandoning its mission to protect children. First by its over-enthusiasm for prevention services, and second by relegating to the private family the important monitoring function of the public child welfare agency. This chapter reviews the evidence on the effects of foster care and examines the values associated with child protection. It chapter argues that government-supported child protection programs are necessary and beneficial to children and families, and that they require resources, research, and public support if they are to impact families as they should.Less

The Child Welfare System as Context

Wendy B. Smith

in Youth Leaving Foster Care: A Developmental, Relationship-Based Approach to Practice

Chapter 1 introduces the child welfare system and provides basic understanding of the policy context and foster care itself. The chapter presents a brief history of child welfare in the US, ... More

Chapter 1 introduces the child welfare system and provides basic understanding of the policy context and foster care itself. The chapter presents a brief history of child welfare in the US, including institutions and legislation. The overrepresentation of children of color in foster care is a serious and continuing problem discussed in the chapter. Poverty is discussed as a contributing factor to racial disproportionality. Kinship foster care is described. Parental incarceration, which has had an historic impact on the entry of children into foster care, is another topic in the chapter. Legislation directly affecting youth leaving care over the last 25 years is introduced.Less

Boarding-out and Fostering by Public Authorities

Kenneth McK. Norrie

in A History of Scottish Child Protection Law

The boarding out of needy children traces its origins in Scotland to 16th century Poor Law legislation and the practice was followed, often without statutory authority, by the Poor Law authorities ... More

The boarding out of needy children traces its origins in Scotland to 16th century Poor Law legislation and the practice was followed, often without statutory authority, by the Poor Law authorities until the Poor Law was replaced by “national assistance” in 1948. The early child protection statutes had allowed a child to be committed to the care of a “fit person”, which was later specified to include charitable organisations and, after 1932, local authorities. Children tended to be placed in rural areas far from their families, and ran the risk of being treated as unpaid labour in farms and crofts. The early regulatory control is examined in this chapter, as are the various official reports on and policy concerns about boarding out throughout the 20th century, in particular the 1946 Clyde Report. Then the increasing regulation of how foster carers are vetted and overseen by local authorities, from the 1980s on, is dealt with, through the creation of fostering panels and fostering agreements. Finally, the 21st century emphasis on kinship care is explored.Less

Revealing the lived reality of kinship care through children and young people’s narratives: “It’s not all nice, it’s not all easy-going, it’s a difficult journey to go on”

Karin Cooper

in Family troubles?: Exploring changes and challenges in the family lives of children and young people

This chapter examines kinship carers’ own children’s experiences of the kinship care arrangement (also known as family and friends care), drawing on research with kinship care families involving ... More

This chapter examines kinship carers’ own children’s experiences of the kinship care arrangement (also known as family and friends care), drawing on research with kinship care families involving interviews with carers, carers’ own children and placed children, and interviews with social workers. The data show the complexity of kinship family life for kinship carers’ own children. Social workers’ normalization of kinship care through the use of pro-family rhetoric is contested by the voices and experiences of some kinship carers’ own children, for whom the emotional and behavioural difficulties displayed by placed children and the adjustments required of them altered the dynamics of their family life and impacted upon their emotional well-being. The placement of children in kinship care, an option assumed by social workers to be ‘normal’ and ‘natural’, disrupted some kinship carers’ own children’s everyday lived experiences in nuanced ways not discussed in social work discourses, and which raise questions regarding whether the placement of known or related children into an established family, may in turn sometimes create a troubled family.Less

The Relationship between Trust and Community Recognition

in Family, Law, and Community: Supporting the Covenant

This chapter begins the search for the links between family and community. In particular, it makes the case for why particular institutions—marriage and legal parenthood—have been accorded special ... More

This chapter begins the search for the links between family and community. In particular, it makes the case for why particular institutions—marriage and legal parenthood—have been accorded special status, and why others that seem factually close—cohabitation, stepparenting, and kinship care—have not. In economic terms, marriage and adoption (or legal parenthood) send strong signals both to the participants in them and to those on the outside looking at them. The chapter also provides theoretical evidence for maintaining the distinction, except perhaps for special subgroups in the community, and further describes how the strong societal consensus surrounding these institutions may change, as well as what role laws may play as opposed to social developments.Less

Men’s caring arrangements and family trajectories

Anna Tarrant

in Fathering and Poverty: Uncovering Men's Participation in Low-Income Family Life

This chapter presents analyses of men’s accounts of their family participation and family trajectories. It explores the questions of how and in which ways men participate in their families in ... More

This chapter presents analyses of men’s accounts of their family participation and family trajectories. It explores the questions of how and in which ways men participate in their families in low-income contexts and foregrounds their caring arrangements and family configurations. The diverse and divergent sets of caring arrangements described by men in different generational positions are considered, drawing on empirical examples across the cases. The findings in this chapter demonstrate how caring arrangements in low-income families are both negotiated and contested over time. This includes across familial generations, between men and women, and often in engagements with services and agencies external to families.Less