The Adoption and Safe Families Act Essay

The foster care system exists in order to enhance the lives of children whose parents were deceased rather than because of abuse today. Our outlook, principles, and ways of being concern for and protecting abused or neglected children and looking after families has shifted greatly throughout history. In this paper I will discuss and inform the readers on the three main components. The first part will discuss the foundation and growth of the foster care system as time pass. Secondly, describe the contemporary state of the system within the United States, including pertinent statistics. Lastly, considering future guidelines intended for the system, including ways in which the system can progress throughout the time.

Benefits of the foster care system include: keeping children out of abusive homes; providing stability; and cultivating secure attachments. In general, proponents of the foster care system believe it plays an essential role in providing a safe and stable environment for maltreated, neglected, and abused children (Lockwood, Friedman, & Christian, 2015). In fact, “advocates suggest that family situations that necessitate the use of the foster care system are often very complex and therefore require patience and time. They emphasize that the temporary nature of foster care is the best solution while state agencies work to achieve family reunification or otherwise resolve the family crisis” (Geraldine & Wagner, para 4, 2015).

In the past few decades there has be an increasing amount of children placed in the foster care system. With the amount of rising teen pregnancies and maternal drug abuse means increasing numbers of infants abandoned at birth. There have been many cases of child abuse or neglect that have been on the rise. State and local agencies are unable to suitably supervise foster homes or arrange adoptions. Statistics show that many children will spend most of their childhood and teenage years in the foster care system, which has shown to leave emotional scars on the child. Today, Child Welfare groups are looking for federal funding and legislation to increase programs and services aimed at keeping families together.

Foster Care and Adoption are the most multi-faceted areas of child welfare. Foster care consists of placing children outside of the custody of their parents or legal guardians. This out-of-home placement can be temporary or long-term. Adoption on the other hand, consists of the legal and permanent process that establishes a parent/child relationship between individuals not related biologically (Downs, Moore, & McFadden, 2009). These two areas of child welfare are constantly evolving and the decisions made on a child’s behalf can affect many areas of their biological, spiritual, social, and emotional wellbeing.

For many years, foster care has been a difficult subject throughout our society. When the idea of foster care comes to mind, many immediately think of screaming children, distressed parenting and uphill battles. Before foster care existed in the United States, orphaned children were sent to orphanages. While these institutions were often the best option available to children with nowhere else to go, they often lacked the necessary staff, structure and resources to adequately care for all of the children in need. As a result, some orphanages were overcrowded, and children lived in poor conditions. Some children even died due to the lack of sufficient care (Adoptions, 2017). In order to give children better living situations, the United

The implementation of the ASFA certainly carries many strengths with its amendments to the AACWA, including a title using “the term ‘safe families’ that few people would want to oppose legislation with this goal” (Jansson, 2008). One of the strengths of the new law was its movement away from bias favoring reunification that the AACWA once carried, and the placing of emphasis on child safety. Another strength was the change from selective provision of services to universal provision of services, where all special needs children would receive health coverage, regardless of whether or not they were a Title IV-E adoption. The switch to annual judicial permanency planning hearings was also an

These things listed above are addressed in bill H.R. 3443. Young people need appropriate information about the strengths and limitations of all permanency options, including adoption, legal guardianship, and other permanent living arrangement, as well as emancipation. Though many foster teens are adopted each year, emancipation to independence is the reality for many others. Long lasting, supportive, and strong connections to family members, friends, and other adults are critical to young people's healthy development while they are in foster care and to their success in adult life. Young people report that relationships with people who care about them and are there for them consistently make all the difference in the world

The U.S foster care system is corrupt and the children trapped in it face the worst of it. The goal of foster care is to eventually reunite children with their parents or find the child a safe, loving home. Instead, foster kids face the harsh reality of abuse, mental illness, and temporary homes. The children and ripped from the homes they’ve known their entire lives because their parents struggle financially. The system would rather pay strangers to the child to take care of him/her rather than helping the parents of the child. This case would be called “neglect” when in reality most parents were doing all they could to take care of their children. The children’s new foster parents are paid hundreds of dollars per month. Often times, the money doesn’t go to the child and he/she is left truly neglected. The system is broken because children are taken from their homes for the wrong reasons and put into unsafe environments that will have a traumatic effect on the rest of their lives.

Many children will average about five or six years in the system and go through four to seven homes, making it hard for the children to find stability and have a productive life. Generally, when a child moves to a new foster home, it is far away, forcing the child to pretty much start all over from the very beginning. Moving from home to home and not having that stability causes the child to have many emotions, which are often ignored by foster parents. The neglect and maltreatment by a lot of foster parents is out of control, but a lot of social workers say there isn’t much they can do. And when the children age out of the system, there aren’t that many resources for them to be on their own. Once they turn eighteen, the foster parents usually send them out on their own, making it difficult for the children to finish school. An ideal environment for the growth of children does not usually exist anymore and in order to promote continuity in the social, emotional, and developmental growth of children, there has to be people out there willing to listen.

Over 600,000 children in the United States are in the foster care system. Reasons include, abuse, neglect and abandonment. These children lack nurturing environments and stable homes. Children within the foster care system have more mental, physical and developmental problems. It is imperative to understand the challenges children entering the foster care system are exposed to. The system works best when children are provided nurturing, and short-term care until they can be placed back home safely or a permanent adoptive family. For many children, however, the stay is longer, with 30% remaining in temporary care for over two years. Staying in the system is detrimental to the child’s well-being. The foster care system is an unsuccessful intervention for children that cultivates development, health and mental issues.

For the purpose of this policy analysis, we will focus on section 201 and 202 of the Fostering Connections Act which focuses on locating and strengthening supports for children whose permanency goal is independent living. Prior to this act, these children were often emancipated from foster care because they had reached the age of 18 rather than because they were in a permanent placement. This act allows states to have the option to provide care and support to youth in foster care

The numbers of children in foster care continue to increase annually with minimal attempts to intercept the causes of the escalation. Children are generally placed into foster care as a result of parental abuse or neglect; however, there are many racial inconsistencies circulating general foster care involvement. In the year of 2014, the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System reported a total of 415,129 children in the foster care system. Depending on their situation, children in the system are in need of some sort of home, whether that be temporary or permanent. When experiencing this type of shift in their lives, many children tend to act out. Foster care in the United States is a

By the year 1967, all U.S. states had child abuse reporting laws. “Child abuse reporting laws and enhanced awareness of child abuse produced an increase in intervention” (Myers, 2013). As reporting laws came into affect, more and more cases of child abuse and neglect were shown. By the mid 1970s, over 60,000 child abuse cases were reported and the extremely high rate of children in foster care alarmed government officials. In 1980, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act (AACWA) was passed. This act required every state to make reasonable efforts in keeping children with their families, and when removing the child was not avoidable, the child was required to have a plan to be placed back in the home or have their parents’ rights revoked. For the children whom returning home was not an option, Congress offered financial incentives for adoption. This effort to preserve the families was a main objective of AACWA. An influential investigation pertaining to this was done by Henry S. Mass and Richard E. Engler, as explained by Sribnick (2011). They concluded that many children were living a majority of their childhood years in foster care and institutions. Their findings showed that if a child stayed in foster care for more than a year and a half, it was not likely that he or she would ever be reunited with his or her family or be adopted. In response to this, the Child Welfare League of America lobbied for child welfare workers to consider

Foster care is a system that evolved from children being maltreated in the past. Starting in the 1700s children were treated as property and not as humans. Many children worked for free to pay off debt for their families. One of the places families dreaded the most were almshouses. Almshouses were used to assist the elderly and the poor. During the 1700s almshouses were one of the only options for aid to the poor families. These families faced the possibilities of being turned away because they were not married before having children or because they do not have the ability to physically work off the debt they gain from receiving charity from the almshouse. During the civil war in the 1800s orphanages were formed to give families a better chance to live a quality life and not have to pay back those who are helping. Orphanages began to focus on children who had been neglected and did not have a family to rely on after the first child protective service investigation. In the investigation it is discovered that a 10 year old girl was being whipped and cut with scissors by her mother. From then on the government began to work on the cps system while Charles Loring Brace formed orphan trains. Orphan trains gathered all the children without a home a transported them to another area where a family could take care of them. At the time it all sounded good but unfortunately, there were very few children who had a success story from orphanages. Many children on orphan trains suffered

The Social Security act benefited many people. Those who fell in this category were workers, victims of industrial accidents, unemployed insurance, aid for dependent mothers and children, the blind, and the handicapped. This Social Security act was later signed into law, by current president at the time, Roosevelt. (Social Welfare History Project, n.d.) Moving along the line in 1970 was when the CWLA helped establish the National Foster Parents Association. In August 1971, this CWLA program received a three-year grant to create an organization based for foster parents. This association was established as an outcome of the concerns of the independent groups. The people felt that the country needed a program to meet the needs of the foster families in the U.S (Family Plus, n.d.). In 1980 the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare became law. The tenacity was to create a program of adoption assistance to ultimately serve different criteria’s. Its purpose was to strengthen the program of foster care assistance for the needy and dependent children, improve child welfare as well as social services and aid to families with dependent children programs (child Welfare Information Gateway, 2012). There are a myriad of different historical information that can lead and relate to the cause of the Child Welfare services. These are all just bits and pieces of importance that historically gives this program