Foster Care: The Key Players in a Complex and Complex Administrative System
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Foster Care: The Key Players in a Complex and Complex Administrative System
Sayra “Bethney” Hill
School of Behavioral Sciences, Liberty University
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Abstract
Our society does not accommodate children very well, particularly those who are abused,
neglected, or disabled. In a paper that directly concerns the issue of foster care, we will discuss
the key stakeholders who impact both the foster care policy and the administration of that policy.
More specifically, we will look at the actions, decisions, and experiences of the policymakers,
social workers, and foster parents that in turn shape the experience of the vulnerable children
placed in their care. Understanding the viewpoint and the motivations of these key players is
essential to evaluating the overall outcome of an administrative system that in some ways is akin
to a “child welfare freeway,” where a handful of children are making the journey toward a more
“stable and secure home.”
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Foster Care: The Key Players in a Complex and Complex Administrative System
Introduction to the Foster Care System
The child welfare systems across the U.S. are directed, first and foremost, to the interests
of children, and these interests often center on staying with families that can keep them safe and
on being protected from harm of any kind. When the family cannot provide safe and stable
conditions for children, the child welfare system tries to locate a different and more permanent
family arrangement, or else safe and stable circumstances for the child. Four basic principles
underlie the work of the child welfare offices in the states.
First, the interests of children are paramount. Second, the offices have a protective
capacity. Third, there is a reasonably prompt attention to the serious circumstances that can lead
to child maltreatment. Fourth, the working-to-locate-a-family proposition, in combination with
the protective proposition, forms the civil child welfare law that governs the lives of children in
the states. (Dettlaff and Boyd 2020)
Every year, over 3 million suspected cases of child abuse and neglect are reported to
county and state public protective services across America, yet only 1 in 5 of those cases are
substantiated. For this handful of kids, many of whom have been abused, their safety within the
confines of their home cannot be guaranteed, and hence a system has been developed to remove
them from their parents, or parent figures, without those figures' consent, as the state takes on the
responsibility of rearing the child. In a lot of these cases, the decision to remove the child
happens so quickly that the child is put in a sort of "holding pattern" until a more permanent
living situation can be arranged.
Most people never think about the foster care system, even many parents, because it
serves a small number of people in society and because it is more often—unhappily—associated
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with pathologies in our society that give rise to the need for the system. Yet, when it is an
unavoidable necessity, the system is fraught with difficulty on so many levels—for the children,
for the biological parents, for the foster parents, and for the birth parents who are unable to
parent safely. The unhappy people in the child welfare system are citizens. Yet, when fostering
has no path to permanency built into it, the first makeover foster care needs if it is ever to
become the model for a system that serves all those it should serve "with dignity”—not as a "skid
row" shelter, but as a hostel with hope—is to put some sunshine into it and reduce the gloom that
so many of its participants inevitably have to live with. (Pastor et al. 2022)
To grasp the intended function of the foster care system, one must realize what it is not.
Society's responsibilities toward its most vulnerable members are most succinctly expressed in
declarations of rights. The core of these declarations has always been what any decent society
should guarantee to all children and, by extension, to all human beings. These are not just
guarantees mentioned in passing; the rights I am about to list are enshrined in international
treaties that carry the moral authority of the entire international community.
The first right: every child is entitled to a name and a nationality. The next is even more
basic: every child has the right to be part of a family and to be raised within that family and
within the constellation of extended family members. Anything else is unnatural. And anything
else is also sure to lead to grave problems for the individual who is not raised within the family.
That intimate setting is the best cradle for a child's growth and development. The purpose of the
foster care system is obvious: It exists to temporarily take care of children who cannot live with
their own families. It is a significant resource of last resort that permits society to intervene in a
family when that family is in such poor condition that the children must be removed for their
own safety, and no other remedy suffices.
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This purpose is not questioned, although certainly many of us do not feel entirely
comfortable with what foster care signifies. Saying that children in troubled families are safer in
foster care than they would be if left in their own homes raises all sorts of disquieting questions
about the kind of care that children in troubled families receiving foster care are actually getting
(Morrow 2009).
Prior to the 20th century, the United States had a nearly nonexistent foster care system.
Private charities took the responsibility of caring for children in need and did so without set
standards or guidelines. This lack of oversight resulted in many children being placed in foster
homes for reasons we would find absurd today. However, by the end of the 19th century, states
began to take a more active role in the development of foster care. (Yi et al.2020)
Philanthropic people also believed that placing children with affluent, religious couples
from farm families would allow the children to grow up in 'normal' homes akin to the ones they
would have had if things had gone relatively smoothly in their lives. The couples were frequently
given a small stipend to take care of the children they were fostering. Yet by the early 20th
century, state and local governments had devised a number of additional child welfare programs,
and there was an ongoing push to set up protective services that would keep the children from
coming to harm.
Foster care provides a living arrangement, usually of a temporary nature, for those
children whose parents cannot care for them and whose need for care has come to the attention
of child protective services. While in care, children may live with relatives, with foster families,
in group care, and in pre-adoptive homes. Foster care is meant to be a short-term living
arrangement for children who have been removed from their birth family homes because of
neglect, abuse, or other issues endangering their health and/or safety. When conditions are safe,
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foster care is intended to help bring families back together or, if that is not possible, to help
much-abused children maintain connections with their parents and the kind of parenting they
never had. (Font & Gershoff, 2020)
Foster care was not created to stop child abuse and neglect, but to punish bad parents—
abusing and neglectful parents, yes, but also parents who were poor, mentally ill, or dependent
on substances. And for much of its history, foster care was certainly not a system supportive of
siblings, extended families, or communities in poverty. In those bad old days of foster care, there
were few good and many bad reasons for placing a child in care—reasons that reflect past
societal and professional values and practices. Poor conditions in inappropriate foster homes,
alongside punitive policies, made care unsafe for many children. Even with improvements, there
are still important long-standing and new systemic challenges that vary from state to state and
within each community.
The foster care system's policies and administration are impacted by certain key
stakeholders whose collective interests sway the system in one direction or another. The base
interests of stakeholder groups (such as children's rights, parental rights, or safety issues)
determine the political climate and the base administrative structures of the system. The parental
influence over the system is key—a parent has the most power of any foster care stakeholder
group. A parent is responsible for their child under ordinary circumstances; when a child's
welfare is at risk, the government is called upon to look after the child. Child welfare workers
have an extraordinary responsibility; they are the ones working directly with parents to maintain
a semblance of family life or, in many tragic cases, to help dismantle a family that has been too
harmed to stay together (Stapleton et al.2022). Foster parents have a unique kind of
responsibility, too. They are more than just a bridge to the half-way point between homes; they
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are the ones developing and maintaining relationships with the children in their care (at least the
children who have not been hooked up with a robot for family visits).
Challenges in the Foster Care System
The fosters in the foster care system are not given enough credit; they are the ones doing
the real work of making the system function. They are not in it for the money; they are not in it
for the glory. For the most part, they are in it because they care. They have made a decision, a
profound one, to parent children who, through no fault of their own, have not had the best kind
of life up to that point. The part that makes this story really "not feel good" is that many of these
individuals, who have been characterized in this book as heroic figures, do not see themselves
that way. They tell us, when asked, that they feel as if the good work they hope to do might roll
over into the future and positively affect the lives of the children they are raising (Roberts, 2022).
A virtually universal part of both public and private child welfare and foster care systems,
social workers serve as professionals whose main job is to render or facilitate the rendering of
services that are needed by birth and foster families. These services are necessary for families to
achieve the very specific and individualized goals and outcomes that they have set in tandem
with child welfare agencies. These goals and outcomes, in a very general sense, are supposed to
promote the safety, well-being, and "permanency" (a fancy word for stability) of children. The
child welfare profession often employs social workers as its frontline service providers, which
might give you a sense of the kind of work that a social worker does (Kirk et al., 2020).
Since foster children are taken from their homes mainly due to severe neglect and
emotional or physical abuse, it stands to reason that family trauma often involves contentious
relationships with parents or other close relatives. And yet, caring for and about the family can
be a good thing in the long term for children. Despite the "goodbye" part of the visit being a very
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hard thing to do, my children seem to enjoy the chance to see and spend time with their birth
parents. They seem to understand the illusion of the "Happy Visit" and are quite good at
pretending. Please see this part of my life in the context of the reality that foster children often
live in (Lemon 2012).
Children entering the foster care system face loyalties torn in different directions. Three
states—California, Pennsylvania, and New York—have been trying out some new ideas to see if
they can advance the interests of all parties involved. Those states have been assembling a new
cast of directorial characters. The jury is still out on the effectiveness of California's and the
other states' new systems, but here’s a glimpse inside that experience. Local welfare workers,
with the help of parents, now write a kind of working contract with the parents. They call it a
case plan. The plan lays out in detail what the parents and the state will together try to
accomplish. The goal is to achieve two crucial developments: first, to enable the safe return of
the child to the family home; and second, to help the family make significant and positive
changes.
Traumatized kids are entering the child welfare system in large numbers. Many of these
kids are coming from abusive and neglectful situations that were long-standing and had a number
of different facets. When you're looking at the whole child, at who they are, and at what kind of a
future they can have, you've got to start with the fundamental notion that the child is a being
that's under stress. There's something wrong when a child’s main feature is that he's or she's
dominated by the stress of being under a maltreatment situation or a world of trauma that's filled
with neglect and abuse. We must recognize that close to 100 percent of children who come into
foster care have been traumatized (Miller et al. 2020).
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An adequate number of foster parents is hard to find—and even harder to keep. That
reality has confronted most of the child welfare agencies across the U.S. for decades. Yet it has
only worsened in recent years, with those agencies now facing both a foster parent shortage and
a "foster parent retention crisis." Several serious shortfalls have contributed to these foster parent
problems. Ultimately, the crucial question becomes this one: How can child welfare workers and
their agencies find and keep better foster parents? Forslund et al. (2022) say that several private
and public child welfare agencies now use business-like marketing strategies as part of their
overall recruitment and retention efforts. These agencies also take a more systematic and sensible
approach in trying to reach and help those prospective foster parents who could most use the
help.
Training and Support Needs
The child welfare system not only requires the development of training and experiences
for child welfare workers; it demands the design and embarkation of a new vision for worker
support. Because we see the child welfare not as a beneficent form of the state but as a powerful
entity that shapes the lives of millions if not billions of children and families, we see the welfare
of the workers in these systems as linked to what happens to the children and families they serve.
They for many reasons deserve not only better training but also an environment of everyday
professional respect and a more manageable number of cases, to begin with. By the way, we also
think that those who are chosen and who choose to work for the child welfare system have a
right to a professional environment that includes the high-quality everyday materials and the
almost superb training that workers in other systems get.
States have the power to make exclusive laws concerning the care and protection of
children. This is a function of decentralized governance, where various levels of government
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share authority. The Constitution empowers the states to create the particular laws that protect
children. Indeed, the states have gone well beyond the Federal Act and have passed many laws
for the express purpose of protecting children and safeguarding their welfare. As a result,
children are much better protected now than they were many years ago. (Burton & Montauban,
2021)
In terms of child support, the Commissions share the responsibility of operating at
various levels. They ensure a "structured, educational intervention for children in difficulties."
Yet the communities and services under the Commissions do much more. They follow up on the
services they render, aiming to achieve results beyond individual and family contexts. They
implement "structured interventions that provide care, assistance, and educational steps for
children and parents." They tend to complex family situations by recalibrating the lives of
children and parents so that they can interact in a more coherent and harmonious way. The object
of these interventions and supports is always the same: ensuring that children have the kind of
lives that allow them to remedy the "pathological detours" that their lives take under certain
circumstances.
At present, the community supports a total of 76 family-type living situations for
children. These communities can accommodate up to 4,090 minor children. Additionally, the
community has 154 housing solutions intended for adolescent groups. These solutions and the
communities work in conjunction with direct intervention staff, ensuring that the programming
maintains continuous educational objectives in these alternative family contexts. The average
length of time in a family community is 16 months, while the average length of time in a housing
solution is 8.7 months. The time spent in either context may be extended as needed. (Burnette et
al. 2019)
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The operation of foster family agencies is governed by laws found in Division 31 of Title
22 of the California Code of Regulations. This same Division holds the regulation of foster
family homes. Because these laws and regulations have to convey legal intent, they are written in
complex language. But the human brain can only effectively memorize and process so much
material. Indeed, one of the laws governing foster care states that the right of an individual or
agency to exist must be "convenient to memorize, to process, and to understand by the human
brain." (Cortelyou-Ward et al. 2020)
The legal firm under contract provided updated material from the California Child
Welfare Resource Library. The laws were difficult to read and understand because of their length
and legalistic language. The impact of these laws on the private lives of families is often quite
sizable. And the families we work with frequently are at some of the most vulnerable moments
of their lives. We have always felt that education and training are paramount when it comes to
the laws governing child welfare services and the impact these laws have on our work—that is,
the work involving the array of services and funding sources (both federal and state) that have an
impact on child welfare practice and policy. (Kartel et al., 2022)
In 1998, almost twice as many African American children were placed in foster care,
compared to their population percentage, while in comparison, about 28% of the children in
foster care in the U.S. were African American. Roberts (2022) states that this proportion has
barely moved in recent years, despite a slight movement downward when looking at the foster
care numbers overall. Roberts (2022) talks about the disadvantages faced by African American
and Hispanic families, which make them more likely to be involved with the child welfare
system. These disadvantages are due to a combination of racism and an economic system that
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has left many people of color in poverty for generation after generation. Roberts (2022) gives a
clear picture of how the United States uses its welfare system to disadvantage families of color.
The different races and ethnicities in the child welfare caseload reflect the nuanced,
layered, and sometimes unfortunate aspects of life that these groups encounter in today's society.
Very often, these accidents of fate tumble helter-skelter together to produce a perfect storm. Not
quite perfect in the way its name might imply, this storm drives a child into the arms of the child
welfare system. Children of color are at social and economic risk, in part because their families
live in a societal structure where advantages are not distributed equitably. (Baker & O'Connell,
2022)
Disproportionality is the term used to describe the overrepresentation or
underrepresentation of certain groups within the child welfare system. Most disparities are seen
at the stage of foster care placement, where racial and ethnic minority children are represented at
staggeringly high rates. They do not experience higher rates of maltreatment when compared to
their White counterparts. Yet, a child of color is more likely to not only be taken from their home
and placed in foster care but also to remain in the child welfare system longer than a White child.
(Maguire-Jack et al. 2020)
Foster care is home to about seven in every 1,000 White children and approximately 12
in every 1,000 Black children. Yet the picture we get from the statistics is somehow less clear
than we are led to believe. Even though the Office of Child and Family Services touts the figure
of "12%," the fact is that proportionately, more than twice as many Black children are in foster
care when we limit the comparison to the population of children under 18. That concern for
overrepresentation, which began with the child welfare movement in the 1960s, also began the
practice of keeping a watchful eye on the child welfare system, for it is no less tragic for
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agencies to under-serve families of color than to over-represent them in matters of child
protection. (Dettlaff and Boyd 2020)
Effects of Aging Out of the Foster Care System
Children often exit the foster care system at an age that varies from state to state—
typically between 17 and 21 years. Youth who age out of the system tend not to do well; they
show unacceptably high levels of underemployment and unemployment, and a significant
number of them seem to have no safe place to live. Foster youth who age out do not seem to be
experiencing anything like the relatively smooth transition to adulthood that most youth
experience. In 2016, the Federal Administration for Children and Families reported that
approximately 20,200 youth aged out of foster care. (Barth et al., 2020)
Certain characteristics sharply increase the risk of being "aged out" of the foster care
system at an early age. These include being in a large sibling group, having a racial or ethnic
minority status, having special needs, being placed in care largely as a prelude to adoption, and
living in a group home or other type of institutional setting. Many of us take for granted that we
are ready for the responsibilities of adult life when we cross the threshold at age 18. Yet some
youths in foster care are not nearly as equipped to live independently when they "age out"
because they have experienced significant delays in normal development and learning, largely
the result of having been abused and/or inadequately nurtured. Outcomes of an independent
living program are most likely to be successful if the program is developed with the input of a
diverse group of youths living in foster care, which is to say, a group of youths who have been
through the assisted living experience.
Facing a Host of Problems
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The problems that youth emaciate from the foster care system are extraordinary.
Unemployment and underemployment are two of the most serious. They are seldom in a position
to support themselves as they transition into adulthood. Studies show just 3% of young men and
women who reach this milestone are in a position to do so. Those who have jobs earn nearly
50% less than their contemporaries, and those who don’t are not likely to be taken seriously
because nearly 50% of our young nonprofit workers are criminals. Life Post-Foster Care is far
from stable considering 70% of these youth suffer from mental illness. The only young people
suffering more serious mental health problems are homeless. Many of these kids will not and
cannot get well because by the time they leave non-therapeutic foster care, they’ve experienced
serious emotional neglect and trauma. When you add all of this up, it browbeats the youth too
much. Kids are killing themselves at a higher recent rate than kids in the general population. Life
after foster care may not be the suicide mission itself, but it certainly leads some kids to take it
that way. (Parton, Thoburn, and Cummings. 2009)
Despite the 1999 Foster Care Independence Act allowing for federal funds to be used for
transitional planning, many youth still find it difficult to leave foster care and move into
independent living. Under the Act, the states are allowed to use a portion of the funds for
"provision of services to 'help children who are leaving the foster care system to make the
transition to independent living and to reduce the problems experienced by those children in
making that transition.'" Still, many young people who age out of foster care do not receive the
help that carries them through into a successful adult life. They have high rates of
unemployment, underemployment, and poverty. A significant number default into survival sex,
crime, and drug dealing. Of the youth that do manage to find jobs, many are only working at the
minimum wage level. Unemployment is further compounded by a high "applicant rejection" rate
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for those who are ex-foster care youth. A chance at a college education is largely absent. Still,
even if some of these young people had the opportunity to enroll in a community college, a four-
year university, or a trade school, the likelihood of their retaining any significant amount of
knowledge is very poor. Students must first overcome the burden of an under-class mentality and
low self-worth.
Innovations and Best Practices in Foster Care
Children's services have long sought to prevent the placement of children in foster care.
Several innovative practices have been developed to accomplish this and show promise in
reducing placements. Other programs have had success in shortening stays in foster care and
hastening the return of children to their families. That division between agencies providing active
treatment and those giving family support has often been a source of heated rivalry and debate.
What kind of "family support" is involved in seizing children from their parents? (Parker, 2021)
Programs that support families try to solve the problems that affect children's attachments to
their families. These programs stand in stark contrast to a society that turns orphans into figures
of lament. They try and help the most troubled families so that children can remain with their
families and not be turned over to the state. Some offer room and board to the parents and
children together as they receive intensive treatment. Others grant money that keeps the family
together and allows them the time to work on problems that made the family so troubled. Do
these programs help? (Echols et al. 2022)
Almost all states have a long history of discriminatory child welfare policies and
practices, where the central focus was not on keeping families together. In light of these
historical and current actions by the states, there is a powerful and potent rationale for changing
the federal child welfare policy to be more centered on families. This policy shift would
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hopefully lead to not only a better ethical framework for child welfare interventions but also one
that is in the best interest of children and youth served by the system. (Dettlaff and Boyd 2020)
In child welfare, there is growing support for funding early preventive efforts, such as home
visiting programs. The kind of work these programs do is essential and has been shown to
improve outcomes for families. However, there’s a catch. The Family First Act, which provides
this funding, doesn't allow states to spend more on these services than they would have spent on
the kind of services that keep families together (or reliving the kind of service that put them back
in foster care) when the federal financing was determined. This cap on spending limits the
potential impact that can be had on out-of-home care reduction. And, of course, there's the
potential competition for funds that good substance abuse treatment programs will face with
those who are seeking to salvage their "family first" budgets.
Policy recommendations from the draft board stem from several objectives. The board
wants to see improved prevention and intervention services so that children can remain with their
families or be reunified with them. The authors want "timely removal [of children] to foster
care," and nonrestrictive placements that are designed to enhance the safety and well-being of
children just taken from (or being returned to) their families. They also want improved legal and
administrative procedures that govern the care of children and the placement of children with
their families. In processes that serve these legally mandated objectives, the board wants
thoughtful oversight. And while they want all of this, they also recognize that it will be
expensive. What's more, the authors had the audacity (or courage) to put into writing stingy
paragraphs that do kind of tell a kind of truth about some of the negative long-term impacts
certain placements have had on the children who have been put into those placements over the
last 30 or so years. (Fong, 2020)
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We put forward here some policy recommendations that tackle key procedural and
substantive issues that our earlier analyses found to need change. We offer suggestions for
maintaining the integrity of the family unit when it is safe to do so—especially meaningful, we
think, because our earlier work found familial reunification to be seriously compromised in the
current system. We push strongly for the kind of serious mental health treatment and kind of
environment conducive to mental health that—quite obviously—our children and families need.
We make recommendations that attack the issues of seriously flawed psychotropic medication
practices and the "over-drugging" of our youth while in foster care. (Ray et al. 2020)
To keep families together when safely possible: Move resources away from child
protective investigations and foster care into family preservation and family support programs.
Many of these public and private programs exist because state legislatures and administrative
departments have increasingly realized that child welfare can be served by keeping children at
home. The next step, taking some cues from the emerging world of public finance, is to develop
a strategy that not only disposes of the old illusion of "heroic" child saving but also generates the
necessary funds for family preservation and support programs. (Baker & Wilke, 2020)
Scriptural Correlations
Luke's first chapter tells of the angel's announcement to Zechariah that he and his wife,
Elizabeth, would have a son—an announcement made in the holy place where sacrifices were
offered. Zechariah could hardly believe it—it had been so long since he and his wife had even
dreamed of having a child. Of course, they had not turned down any dreams that could sustain
their hopeful spirits (Meyer, 2022). But now, with Elizabeth beyond childbearing age, and with
so many years of barrenness behind them, what dreams could they verily have expected to come
true? And yet, it seems, in the child-welfare system metaphor, they dared to hope they could give
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birth to a needy child. Zechariah dared to hope, perhaps as best he could, that he might soon
deliver a child to an even more needy society—one that was expecting John to emerge from the
wadi of the Jordan.
Young children's most basic need during the earliest part of the physical, psychological,
and emotional development is for consistent, nurturing, and secure relationships with primary
caregivers. Studies have shown that placing children in loving and nurturing family
environments during the earliest part of their development promotes long-term positive
emotional, social, cognitive, and physical outcomes. In contrast, placing young children in
unstable environments either with their original family or with substitute caregivers has the
opposite effect. For children facing long-term foster care, the path to instability with the world of
opportunities for the development of secure attachments with significant adults is paved with
their necessary and sufficient loss of the fosters path and the manor of endings that are
consistently significant in their lives. Given the solicitous care that the foster children path
demands, the payoffs in opportunities for the formation of secure attachments with significant
adults along the way, and the security that a fictional life story promises, the toll exacted is too
high. The ability for the formation of secure attachments in the fictive world diminishes with
each demand for necessary loss that perforates the path. (Luthar 2020)
Evidence from research suggests that children in foster care face substantial challenges in
forming and maintaining effective relationships. Even so, some scholarly inquiry has
hypothesized that children in foster care have a largely positive image of God. Indeed, a
significant number of children in the study smiled when characterizing God and referred to Him
in loving and compassionate terms. In stark contrast, if you were to ask children who are not in
foster care but are facing similar troubling circumstances about their image of God, I wonder
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what their responses would be. More good news is that according to the Bay Area chapter of the
Child Trauma Academy, children in foster care do not see themselves as more distant from God
than any other children experiencing similar types of maltreatment. Author Ronald Raynor, who
has dedicated some 50 years to research in this field, argues that the divine qualities associated
with God not only set the standard for parent behaviors but are also associated with family
processes that are healthy and protective.
Conclusion
In summary, all children and particularly mistreated or disabled children are under the
same misfit label that characterizes all child welfare clients. When placed in foster care, these
children experience an additional layer of risk and the added difficulty of seemingly endless
negotiations toward home, when that is considered safe and possible. The overgeneralization and
misfit label that come from the stereotypes of child welfare clients make the lives of the clients
even more wretched than they are already. Moreover, negative child welfare client attitudes of
foster care toward other children, and certainly toward adults, add insult to injury on top of what
is already a very fragile and emotional situation. Yet even as we bring up this very painful
subject, we professionals who work with child welfare clients must assume the mantle of
negative image changers if we are to create any positive effects in terms of changing harmful
stereotypes and thereby changing the hurtful circumstances these children endure.
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References
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Repeal the child abuse prevention and treatment act and delink child protection from
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Zima, B. T. (2020). The Impact of Attachment-Disrupting Adverse Childhood
Experiences on Child Behavioral Health. The Journal of Pediatrics, 221, 224–229.
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