The FAMCare Blog

Foster children face numerous difficulties. The overwhelming thought of removing them from their homes is stressful, but for many young people entering the social security system, this is only the beginning.

As a result of the violence, many children have been forced to flee their homes. Most are forced to adjust to constantly changing settings because they are moved from one home to another.

Staying in a foster care facility is difficult in any situation and can have serious consequences for a child's behavioral and mental health. To promote foster children's safety and mental health, it is critical to understand what they face on a daily basis and the dangers they face.

Foster Care to Adoption

Of the 428,000 children in foster care in the U.S., over 30% cannot be returned to their families and are waiting to be adopted. 135,000 children are adopted each year and there are currently 1.5 million adopted children in the United States. 59% are from the child welfare (or foster) system. Children enter foster care through no fault of their own because they have been abused, neglected or abandoned. These children are in the temporary custody of the state while their birth parents are given the opportunity to complete services that will allow the children to be returned to them if it is in the children’s best interest. Unfortunately, 30% of them never make it.

Social work is filled with disconcerting moral challenges.  In child protective services, practitioners are called on to investigate reports of abuse or neglect of children. Once they have investigated the allegations and considered all relevant facts, these social workers have to make daunting decisions about whether to remove the alleged victim from their homes and find alternative housing arrangements. These decisions affect the parents, the children, and the family at large. Rest assured, social workers are aware that, even as they are trying to prevent the child from suffering abuse or neglect, someone is about to suffer. The cases these professionals are called upon to handle are rarely black and white.

“An 18-year-old sleeps in a doorway of a public building with nothing but a tattered blanket to shield him from the cold wind. He took little more than the clothes on his back when his foster parents demanded that he leave home. He hasn’t been in touch with his biological parents in years. None of his friends’ parents will allow him to spend a night on their sofa. And he’s unfamiliar with the nearest homeless shelter.” (Social Work Today, Vol. 19, P.24, Nadine Hasenecz, MSW, LSW)

“Shelter in place. Stay at home. Self-isolation. Quarantine. Important measures for slowing and overcoming the spread of COVID-19. But for survivors living with violence, abuse, and assault, these terms mean something else: trapped.” (NPQ, May 8, 2020, Drew Adams)

As 2019 is now behind us and we look forward to 2020 - we here at Global Vision Technologies would like to express our thanks to all of the caseworkers, foster care parents, healthcare providers and so many others who have taken responsibility for our country’s most vulnerable resource - children and families.

About a year ago, President Trump signed the Family First Prevention Service Act into law. Social workers engaged in child and family care praised the legislation as the first “prevention” measure to help keep children safely with their families and avoid the traumatic experience of entering foster care. The act emphasized the importance of children growing up in families and helps ensure children are placed in the least restrictive, most family-like setting appropriate to their special needs when foster care is needed.

For those working in child services, an understanding of family situations is vital in being able to

help improve child welfare. Fortunately for those agencies, utilizing the right social services

software can help streamline processes and effectively “humanize” the various situations.

The goal is to always be improving child welfare through various services, responses and

interventions, and with the right social services software on your side, the tasks can become

easier to track and perhaps even more simple.

“I was brought up in a household where Christmas meant fun, laughter, presents and lots of food. Christmas was my favorite time of the year,” a social worker, who prefers to remain anonymous, began her Christmas story. “I guess that’s why, when I began my career in social work, it startled me to realize that for most of the children in my care Christmas was a very difficult time.”