Apa Case Study On Foster Care Children

[Providing for the best interests of the child?: The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997]

The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 aimed to increase the amount of permanent placements after foster care. Research suggests that permanent placements are more beneficial than the reunification with biological parents. According to the United States General Accounting Office (2002), approximately 800,000 children are in foster care. A seminal longitudinal study, with 214 youth foster care participants who had been in foster care for at minimum 5 months, examined the relationship between reunification and problem behaviors. This study suggests that adolescents reunified with biological parents showed more problem behaviors, compared to their

It is very common that foster care children to have behavioral and emotional problems (Pilowsky, 1995, Rosenfeld et al., 1997 and Heflinger, Simpkins and Combs-Orme, 2000). Researchers were interested in the parental and familial psychosocial functioning, as well as the parents’ education and family income. Typically, higher parent education and family income is related to better behavioral and emotional outcomes of children, however the following study suggests it is not always the case. A MAPP training model (Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting) (Child Welfare Institute, 1987) was used prior to service. Various scales were used- Social support behaviors scale (SSB), Dyadic adjustment scale (DAS), Partner abuse scale (non-physical) (PASNP), Family Assessment device- general functioning Subscale (FAD-GF), Brief symptom inventory (BSI), and Adult-adolescent parenting inventory (AAPI). Results showed that married couples had more psychological problems (at least three) than single women or men (one or two psychological problems). Family education and income did not have a significant effect, as there were no consistent findings among foster parent applications (McFadden,

Of the children who are categorized as “abused and neglected,” about two thirds have a parent with AOD problems. However, there are other related problems, such as poverty, domestic violence, mental health issues, and incarceration. An electronic database, LEXIS-NEXIS, researched court case documents to study the reasons parents’ rights were terminated (Allen & Golubock, 1985). The court cases were from four states- Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Virginia-which included 428 cases of parental substance use. Frequency counts were used in order to determine coinciding categories. There were two groups, the TPR (termination of parental rights) group and the NTPR (no termination of parental rights) group, which each contained 30 cases. There were both qualitative and quantitative results. Results showed that if parents had mental health issues, as well as substance abuse problems, the more likely TPR would occur. While several court cases were included and studied, many details were not considered, including demographic characteristics, severity of substance use, and the severity of child maltreatment. While this study only included four states, there may be judicial differences in regards to TPR that were not accounted for (Azar et al., 1995 and Margolin, 1997). It is also important to note that since the sample size was small, it was necessary to include more NTPR cases in order to have