Additionally, ASFA paved the way for the legal sanction of concurrent planning simultaneously identifying and working on a secondary goal, such as guardianship, with a relative by requiring that agencies make reasonable efforts to find permanent families for children in foster care should reunification fail. Fostering Connections enhanced services for youth aging out of care and created new programs to help children and youth in or at risk of entering foster care to reconnect with family members.
The act also provided the opportunity for federally recognized Indian Tribes, Tribal organizations, and Tribal consortia—for the first time in history—to directly operate title IV-E programs.
Child welfare permanency practice and related policies continue to evolve as agencies, professionals, families, and policymakers strive to achieve a balance that keeps children safe, preferably in their own homes. The following resources summarize the history of foster care and permanency in the United States along with important legislative efforts that have been put forth over the past few decades.
Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children's Bureau Outlines the history of the Child and Family Services Reviews, which allow the Children's Bureau to determine what is happening to children and families and assist States in enhancing their capacity to serve families and children. In , the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act amended the definition of child abuse and neglect to include sex trafficking as a form of Child Abuse and Neglect.
Though often occurring underground and away from public scrutiny, child sex trafficking is a substantial problem —an estimated , American children are victims of sex trafficking every year, and the National Human Trafficking Hotline reports that this number is on the rise.
Child victims of sex trafficking are often very young—on average, victims are only twelve years old—and the clear majority are women and girls. The bulk of sex trafficking victims are youth involved in the child welfare system, particularly those who have run away or been placed in out-of-home care. Today, many perpetrators of sex trafficking contact potential victims online, urging them to run away. Youth who do run away—even if not at the behest of a perpetrator—are at much higher risk of becoming a victim, as they can end up more easily in dangerous situations.
Other factors that increase the likelihood of a child becoming a victim are a history of physical and sexual abuse, foster or other out-of-home placement and disconnection from their families and communities. All of these are important aspects to child welfare and the prevention of child abuse and neglect. As with other forms of child abuse and neglect, becoming a victim of sex trafficking can burden children with mental and physical issues in adulthood.
Many sex traffickers use illegal drugs to sedate their victims, creating a higher likelihood for future dependency; victims who escape their situations can also become involved with the juvenile justice system, as up to 1, children every year are jailed on prostitution charges.
Additionally, the psychological and physical impacts of sex trafficking can create a long-lasting struggle with anxiety, depression, PTSD and other mental illnesses for child victims. So, there may be many more children struggling with the negative effects of poverty than are officially recorded by the government. The disadvantages of youth growing up in low-income families can be both immediate and longer-term. Along with facing developmental stressors, children growing up in low-income households are more likely to live in substandard housing, experience food insecurity or poor nutrition, and live in unsafe or unstable neighborhoods.
Economists suggest that child poverty costs the U. Parents, caregivers, and families living in poverty are doing the best they can with what they have. Increases in poverty are correlated to increases in child maltreatment reports. As a result, the connections between child welfare and child poverty are critical to helping us understand and address the impact of poverty on the whole family. That law is usually identified with its social insurance programs, old-age pensions and unemployment compensation, both of which were aimed at male heads of family and were not means-tested, therefore carrying no stigma.
It was a skimpy and only partially federally-funded program, in part because its authors envisioned it as only temporary-—assuming that lone motherhood would decline as a new welfare state would eliminate poverty. In contrast to the social-insurance titles, ADC was not only means tested — but also morals-tested — requiring invasive surveillance of recipient families; its benefits were below the lowest prevailing minimum wages; it was funded primarily by the states through property and sales taxes; and it was not an entitlement but a public charity, of which the recipient had to prove herself deserving.
Far from shrinking, ADC grew geometrically, particularly as a civil rights consciousness led nonwhites to demand citizenship rights. ADC remained the main program for poor children until its repeal in In its sixty years, as it grew in its number of recipients, its stipends declined.
In federal funds for foster care were provided. With the repeal of ADC, therefore, the number of needy children removed from their families has grown once again. Another approach, pioneered by New York state in and supported by the federal Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of , was to subsidize adoptions. Subsidies challenged the assumption that permanent kinship required financial independence and acknowledged the high costs of raising children, especially those who needed ongoing medical and psychological help.
Yet just as adoption subsidies encouraged stability for children, a decision in a class action suit maintained instability for foster children. In Smith v. Supreme Court decided that foster parents could not oppose childrens removal or expect a default preference for keeping their families intact, as birth families could, no matter how long-lasting and deep the ties between foster parents and children.
In the last decades of the 20th century, child-welfare policy has veered between two goals that are often in conflict: child protection and family preservation. In the s and s, pressure from progressive social movements and discourse emphasized the rights of poor parents and recommended aid to intact families.
In the s, child safety and removal from caretakers dominated the discourse—and, not coincidentally, proved cheaper. In general many single mothers have been successfully pushed into jobs, but most of them are minimum-wage and insecure jobs, without benefits, and many of these families have been made poorer rather than better-off by the employment of the mothers. More recent legislation has made piecemeal adjustments. There were , children in care in see Table 28 , 41 percent of whom were under the age of six.
Of every 1, white children in the United States, 5. Children do best when placed with families, preferably their own relatives, but some require a level of mental or behavioral health treatment that can only be provided in a congregate non-family setting, such as a group home or child care institution.
Congregate care is meant to be temporary treatment, but children are often inappropriately placed in these settings without a clinical need or are held long after their clinical needs are met. Foster care is intended to be temporary, with the ultimate goal of returning children safely home to their families.
When this is not possible, children must be placed into permanent homes, either through adoption, guardianship, or other arrangements with relatives. In , , children left foster care after an average of 20 months in care.
More resources are needed to ensure that every child can grow up in a safe, stable, and loving family. By dramatically increasing investments in family support, we can keep families strong and prevent the need for foster care. Making this early investment will free up necessary resources to improve the child welfare system for the families that do need it, including specialized treatment services to help children heal from the trauma they have experienced and robust supports to help families reunify safely.
Stressors caused by the COVID pandemic that are detailed throughout this report —economic, housing, and food insecurity, school and child care closures, and decreased access to services and supports—are testing the resilience of families.
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