Children Without Futures: a Feasibility Study Comparing Characteristics of Families Who Have Children Placed in Long and Short-term Foster Care

摘要

Many children drift into unplanned long-term foster home care, under conditions unsatisfactory for the child, his own family and the foster parents. Current practice in foster care often contributes to foster children growing up without the necessary love, support and guidance from a family that he can call his own. Recent publications in social work journals have suggested that a lack of consistent family relationships may be injurious to the emotional development of children. Social workers have become increasingly dissatisfied with a u22helping processu22 that may, in fact, generate more harm than help. Originating from the social workeru27s dissatisfaction with the foster care system is an awareness that some method for evaluation of parenting potential is a critically important factor if the goal of responsible planning for foster home placement is to be attained. One possible method for evaluating parenting potential is to analyze the parentsu27 history of adaptation through an examination of case record material. The purpose of our study is to determine the feasibility of the case analysis method as a tool for the development of predictive criteria designed to evaluate u22potential for parentingu22 and thus, aid in more adequate foster care planning.