Healthy Development of Youth while in Foster Care

The foster care system in the United States provides safety, well-being, and protection for millions of children and youth entering the system as wards under the governmental custody and remains with foster families or family orphanages until they leave them at the age of 18 or are adopted. According to National Foster Youth Institute (2017), more than 250,000 children enter the foster care system in the United States a year.

The critical point here is that the system promises children a better life, an ocean of care, love, attention, safe and lovely families. However, sometimes, these words have no meaning. Get a foster placement right, and the effects on a child can be nothing short of miraculous, but when it goes wrong, the results can easily reinforce prior placement breakdowns, disrupt friendships in a new school and exacerbate emotional, behavioral and relationship problems (Michelson & Banerjea, 2016). More and more youth is prone to be a victim of sexual assault, maltreatment, and murder. In 2012, there were approximately 679,000 instances of confirmed child maltreatment from the over 3 million reports generated (NFYI, 2017).

Children are supposed to be placed in foster care because the maltreatment they face is severe, chronic, or unlikely to stop (Wildeman & Waldfogel, 2014). However, what should social workers do when the same cases happen within foster families? The lack of investigation and appropriate services lead to neglect of a foster child and unfavorable consequences for life, mental health, and future of a kid. The Child Welfare System has a plethora of foster care workers and counselors who endorse their commitment to youth by being engaged in their lives. Due to a vast amount of caseloads, social workers fail to fulfill their duties toward foster children, which lead to neglect, abuse, and even death within foster families.

Nevertheless, the innovation UMATTER focuses on useful training and advocacy for foster care workers.  UMATTER will create a curriculum to maintain the Child Welfare System liable. The significance of the innovation is addressing the issue and altering the entire strategic plan in social work. By not doing so, foster care workers may harbor feelings of impuissance. As a result, fatigue may form the inadequate perspective of the case and impede their commitment and ability to sort out the situation of foster youth rationally.

Through comprehensive reform campaigns, Children Rights (CR) is pushing states to provide caseworkers with an essential foundation of robust training programs, manageable caseloads, well-functioning computer systems, and resources to help kids and families (Children Rights, 2014). UMATTER is a vital solution regarding social workers and foster children. One cannot expect to take a child out of his/her home, put in a new shelter, and forget about a child hoping he/she will thrive. This is where the social workers come in as they can provide supports and services, but a social worker can only access existing resources in a community (NFYI, 2017).

UMATTER’s central policy is to receive grants to lobby legislators to impose policies so that foster care workers will not obtain more than fifteen of the caseload. BASW’s 2012 State of Social Work survey revealed that 85% of social workers had experienced notable cuts to services in the previous 12 months, with 77% concerned about unmanageable caseloads (Hardy, 2015). Due to such policy, they will be able to meet the needs of the youth while in foster care. Additionally, UMATTER will provide a comparative analysis of how the rate of diminished caseloads springs the safety and well-being of foster care children.

The strategy is to create a practice wheel of assessments for child welfare workers. Young people can tell the difference between an overworked, poorly trained caseworker, and someone who is adequately supported by a child welfare system (Children Rights, 2014). It comprises:

  • involving professionals to acknowledge the need for appropriate emotional assistance;
  • uniting child welfare leaders to make systemic transformations within agencies;
  • teaming with useful educational programs about traumatic stress to assist professionals in preparing these situations;
  • providing STS’s knowledge and practice in the curriculum within higher education;
  • assessing foster care workers annually for mental stability;
  • merging the outcomes of the assessments into a self-care plan regarding physical, emotional, and psychological support;
  • launching and controlling the interventions;
  • evaluating the efficacy of the innovational program according to the established timeline.

The interventions will be designed not only for the crisis but ongoing purposes. Early recognition of mental health difficulties and timely evidence-based interventions can go a long way toward alleviating poor outcomes in late childhood and adolescence (Michelson & Banerjea, 2016). Therefore, the wheel will help to enhance the lives of foster care workers to reduce caseloads, stress, and stigma of neglect and inadequate services.

Foster care professionals often face caseloads, which lead to terrible outcomes for foster children. As a result, social workers are prone to get psychological trauma and stress. The lack of support for child protection workers is a serious issue across the country (Children Rights, 2014). Thus UMATTER’s initial mission is to create a 501c3 organization designed within the Department of Social Services to provide appropriate training and in-depth assessment for child welfare workers. Often when workers are spread too thin, they fail to link kids with permanent families, children are not visited, they are put in inappropriate homes and the risk of abuse and neglect increases (Children Rights, 2014).

Admittedly, training and bound between social workers and foster children should be the number one priority; thus they need to have a limited amount of cases and pay close attention to children in foster families. In other words, the mission of the organization is to implement and toughen partnership to guarantee the healthy development of youth, strengthen their family’s bond, and support a sound environment during the foster care. Personal attributes of carers like tolerance, persistence, flexibility, and kindness are linked with more stable placements; older and more experienced foster carers also tend to provide more stability (Michelson & Banerjea, 2016).

The critical evaluation approach of ensuring the healthy development of foster youth is evidence-based prevention services.  Producing evidence and offering consultation in this area are essential parts of work as academics and clinicians in child and adolescent mental health services (Michelson & Banerjea, 2016). One of the most effective and crucial components lies in research tools, which collect and analyze data. It would be impossible to put in hand all necessary information and outcomes without instruments.

All social workers are required to complete UMATTER personal and professional assessment and personal interview, questionnaires and psychological test. The questionnaires will determine the potential risk for traumatic stress. The control groups will help to detect the real points of social work’s hazards. This method will assist in evaluating the practical training and overall program. 

Results will vary from level one, two, and three, where the level three is being the largest area of stress. The outcomes will define the level of required services, timeline, and type (one on one or group/peer counseling) along with frequency. Secondary trauma stress (STS) can be in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder and a negative self-concept. Figley (1995) defines STS as an observable reaction to working with the traumatized and mirrors the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, rather than the source of trauma emanating from an event directly; it comes to us indirectly.

Online modules for foster care workers can assist in performing self-assessments of pretests for STS or stress that will increase the rigor of the evaluation regarding the mental condition of clients. Both personally and professionally aspects are occasionally resulted in foster care workers perceiving flashbacks, detachment from main duties and services, missed red flags while making safety and well-being assessments, or overall stress and fright of a foster kid dying on their caseload. Thus all staff in UMATTER support services will have a caseload reduction and bi-monthly counseling assisting in the prevention of stressors and other circumstances. The research instruments will provide the organizations and the participants with a wide range of opportunities, observation, skills, and positive or negative bonds within the groups.

Moreover, education can play a significant role here. That is, the cooperation and interaction with colleges and universities are rather crucial for the successful implementation of the program UMATTER. In other words, Bachelor and Master Degrees of Social Work programs have to rely on STS curriculum. Education is deemed as an essential influence on favorable outcomes. Social workers and foster carers should do their utmost to raise academic expectations and encourage school participation, engagement and attainment (Michelson & Banerjea, 2016). Therefore, it will boost and promote recruiting of future child welfare workers through various partnerships with higher educational, social work programs.

Aside from the positive side of the innovation, there are some biases, which might not help child welfare workers within UMATTER. For example, the Local Department of Children Services can refuse to cooperate with UMATTER due to the ambiguity of the issue. Social workers are coming under strain as workloads increase, in both adult and children’s services, while local authority funding cuts continue to bite (Hardy, 2015). On the same page, some social workers will refuse to team with services due to stigma even if they have dealt with terrible cases in foster care’s maltreatment. It might prevent from obtaining adequate data during the survey and implementation plan. Simply put, these challenges might be the largest obstacle to define the magnitude of the problem, dependent variables, and the lack of adequate funding to sustain staff.

Data collection and instruments are of importance. However, there is one thing which plays a significant role in the implementation plan, i.e., the measure of the program’s effectiveness. This is where the reliability and validity take place. Reliability is responsible for producing the stable and efficient outcomes while validity is an instrument measuring what it needs to be regulated.

To be precise, suitability includes the evaluation of an organization’s effectiveness and efficacy every three or four months to portray the value of the innovation and implementation plan along with the ways to improve desirable outcomes. This section directly connects to potential biases, because the program is unlikely to be very successful in the beginning due to the lack of evidence, and the stigma of foster care workers. However, if UMATTER is verified and assessed rigorously every three months, then it will pull in more attention at the local, federal, and global level. 

UMATTER solely focuses on foster children subjected to abuse, sexual assault, harassment, and even death. With the negative side of numerous caseloads, child welfare workers cannot cope with them and be attentive to every case within foster families. As a result, foster youth face terrible situations with their foster ‘caregivers’ along with neglect from social services. Therefore, UMATTER needs to collect adequate data from the survey with frontline foster care workers and analyze it in details to make profitability and alterations both for social professionals and foster children.

References

“51 Useful Aging Out of Foster Care Statistics | Social Race Media.” (2017). National Foster Youth Institute (NFYI). Retrieved from https://www.nfyi.org/51-useful-aging-out-of-foster-care-statistics-social-race-media

“For Overwhelmed Caseworkers, Protecting Kids Can Be a Struggle.” (2014). Child Rights. Retrieved from https://www.childrensrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Fall-2013-newsletter-PDF.pdf

Figley, C. R. (1995). Compassion Fatigue: Coping With Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder In Those Who Treat The Traumatized (Psychosocial Stress Series). London: Routledge.

Hardy, R. (2015). How can high social work caseloads be tackled? The Guardian [Online]. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2015/jan/21/how-can-high-social-work-caseloads-be-tackled

Michelson, D. & Banerjea, P. (2016). How social workers and carers can make foster placements more stable. The Guardian [Online]. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2016/mar/17/foster-placements-stability-children-care-social-work

Wildeman, C. & Waldfogel, J. (2014). Somebody’s Children or Nobody’s Children? How the Sociological Perspective Could Enliven Research on Foster Care. Annu Rev Sociol., 40:599–618. doi:  10.1146/annurev-soc-071913-043358

The terms offer and acceptance. (2016, May 17). Retrieved from

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"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

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"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

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"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

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