Introduction to Family and Child Services
1. Child and Welfare services reflect society’s organized conviction about the worth of the child and
the family, and the child’s rights as a developing person and future citizen
2. Child welfare has two primary roles:
a. Providing direct services to child and their families
i. When serious problems are identified
b. Influencing public policy to improve the lives of all children
3. Summarily: to strengthen family life for children is regarded as the primary purpose of child
welfare.
Child Welfare today is more complex than originally created; deals with more complex family problems.
Previously: rescued children from neglectful families and placed in institutions.
Social changes have forced social welfare agencies to adapt and innovate services.
Examples include:
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Alternative family forms and child rearing patterns
Accelerated entry of women with young children into the workforce
Unprecedented growth of female-headed households
Increased official reporting of child abuse and neglect
Other issues including:
o Increase number of children with AIDS
o Homeless children and families
o Violent antisocial behavior by youth
o The damage to children and families resulting from drug use
Controversial Developments:
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The number of children in foster care is high
Media coverage of children who have been severely maltreated, even to the point of death
Apparent inability of child welfare agencies to prevent maltreatment
o These have led to calls for changes in policy including:
 Bringing back orphanages for children of substance abusing parents
 Class action suits against agencies
 Reforms to give children more legal standing inn court to separate themselves
from their families
These changes underscore the need for competent individuals in the system of child and family social
services.
The child’s development is dependent on child’s interaction between them and the environment. As
family forms the dominant part of the child’s life; they are at center stage and have greatest impact on
child’s early development.
Roles of the Family:
1. Major instrument for providing for the welfare of children.
2. The primary social institution for meeting social, education and health care needs.
3. Negotiates with the larger environment to see that the child’s needs are met
The larger society often gets involved: when the family is judged to be incapable of ensuring the child’s
welfare.
This can occur for a number of reasons:
1. Extraordinary needs of a special group of children that can easily overwhelm family resources.
E.g. Developmental disabilities.
2. Lack of resources or major dysfunction; cannot meet minimal standards of care e.g. neglected and
abused children
The Changing American Family
Problems of Children and Young Persons
Changes in the American family over recent decades have led to pronouncements that the American
family is breaking down, losing its preeminent position in American society.
More prevalent is the belief that the American family is merely adapting to a very different world from the
one it experienced earlier.
Changes in American Family Landscape:
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The increasing diversity in the American ethnic landscape will force human service agencies to
become more adept at offering programs that are congruent with families’ cultures and
languages.
- Unprecedented increase in the number of those headed by single parents.
- Increased number of young adults delaying marriage
- More diverse family structure.
o Living with grandparents
o Stepparents
o Adoptive parents
o Parent’s unmarried partners
 Being poor means being at risk
o Poverty afflicts about 16% of American families with children
 Due to parent’s mental or physical illness
 Low education levels/lack of marketable skills
 Lack of access to employment
 Poor job skills or transportation
 Poor children are:
o Faced with more health problems
o Higher risk of death
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Higher risk of infant mortality
More likely to die from disease, accident, drowning or fire
More likely to have stunted physical or intellectual growth
More likely to be exposed to environmental toxins including lead, asbestos
No safe areas to play
Often experiences, social isolation, alienation, low self-esteem and other social and
psychological problems as a result f the deprivation and feeling excluded from
mainstream society.
Homelessness: results in disrupted family life, school interference, damaged physical and emotional
health and separation of family members.
Negative peer influence, violence, and substance abuse
“Many of these problems in large part reflect the failure of communities and the public schools to
educate young people in ways that are relevant to the complexity of life today and that generate a level of
competence vital to successful social functioning and individual well-being. For many school children,
the result is a diminishing desire to learn, an inability to adapt to change, confusion about life goals,
alienation from school and community, and antagonistic attitudes toward a society that has not solved its
problems of war, poverty, unemployment, drugs and racism.” Downs et al
 Children are more greatly impacted by their peers
 Media and entertainment industries expose children to a greater range of experiences and
behaviors than formerly; youth fads are often glorified and amplified in the media.
Consequently, we are faced with a lack of knowledge about how to help youth with growing problems of
alcohol and drug abuse.
AIDS Epidemic: make special demands on the social services systems
Youth Violence: After a decade of increasing youth violence, it has begun to fall, although the rate is still
quite high.
Characteristics of youth that commit violent crimes:
 Live in urban neighborhoods with high levels of male unemployment, extreme poverty, social
disorganization, poor schools, gang activity and families who have engaged in criminal activity
and who engage in violent acts with each other.
 Juveniles are increasingly exposed to guns.
Children of vulnerable families
Most presenting problems have centered on parent-child relationships or between husband and wife.
Reasons for relationship problems:
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Some parents are immature and overwhelmed with new or overly demanding
responsibilities
Others are poorly equipped with the knowledge they need to give good care to children
and maintain family balance.
Despite greater availability of birth control, many parents lack the help they want to plan
the size of their families and too use contraception effectively.
Some stem from birth to teenage parents who are themselves immature, highly vulnerable
to discontinued schooling and lacking the knowledge of how to care for their children as
well as the financial means to do so.
Children are frequently brought to the attention of social welfare agencies due to concern about abuse
and neglect.
Some of these children maybe enabled to live away from their own parents in foster homes or
institutions, though many can remain in the home with appropriate services.
Out of home placements expose children to emotional trauma of separation from familiar family
members, home, school and neighborhood.
Juvenile courts, adoptive homes, etc addresses a large segment of the population through offering
various preventive and supportive services; however, many children and families need help that is not
available at all of that is insufficient to improve their situation.
Thought Questions/Discussion:
Discuss preventive and supportive services that are available in Jamaica that you are aware of and
services that are needed that are not available in the society.
What services do the larger segment of population that do not fall in the strict need categories need?
Can you think of ways that these services could be provided?
 Measuring the well-being of America’s Children
Indicators of Child Wellbeing
Economic Security
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Child poverty and family income
Secure parental employment
Housing problems
Food security and diet quality
Access to health care
Health Care
 General health status
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Activity limitation
Childhood Immunization
Low Birth Weight
Infant Mortality
Child Mortality
Adolescent mortality
Adolescent births
Behavior and Social Environment
 Regular Cigarette Smoking
 Alcohol Use
 Illicit Drug Use
 Youth victims of serious crimes
 Youth perpetrators of violent crimes
Special Feature
Education
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 Youth neither enrolled in school nor
working
 Higher education
Family reading to young children
Early childhood care and education
Mathematics and reading achievement
High School academic course-taking
High school completion
 Children of at least one foreign-born
parent
Historical Highlights of Services to Families and Children
 Indenture and “Outdoor Relief”
o Children who required support by the town were “farmed out” to the a family who would
keep the child for a small amount of money or goods
o Others sent off to live in almshouses with the adult misfits of the town
o Able-bodied older children were usually indentured: apprentice whose wages were kept
in return for maintenance. (forward step in childcare).
o Outdoor relief: to give meager support to children in their own homes: provided aid to
more children than all other forms
 Children’s Institutions and the Growth of Voluntary Agencies
o Society realized that children needed more care than from indentureship
o Orphans created in response to children whose parents died in natural disasters
o Institutions later became child placing agencies
o Latter half of the 19th century: the ear of child saving”
 Save European immigrant children from urban slums
 Placed them in free foster homes
 Placed them in foster homes for eg Children’s Aid Society of New York
 Also to protect children from cruelty
 At that time, although abuse and neglect laws existed, they were poorly
enforced.
o Later Settlement houses were developed:
 They provided services to preserve families and enhance human dignity, skill and
values.
 Attempted to strengthen neighborhoods as environments for families
African-American Children and Slavery:
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Excluded from orphanages
Aid provided through mutual aid groups such as churches and benevolent societies
African-American children not integrated into social welfare services until 1930s
 State Boards of Charities
 Federal Government Involvement
Summarily until the 20th century, the care of destitute, neglected and abused children was the domain
of private, charitable organizations. Many children received no protection from cruel families or the
problems associated with disease, immigration, child labor, and crowded, inner-city tenement living.
State and federal programs for children began early in the twentieth century, but has never reached a
funding level sufficient to meet the needs of vulnerable children.
Public Policies for Families and Children
 Residual versus Developmental View of Social Welfare
o Social policy towards families and children may be characterized as:
 Residual, directed at the resolution of problems after they arise serious problems
in families’ care of children.
 Most child welfare services are residual: intended to ameliorate, and not
to prevent
 Developmental: holds that even well-functioning families need help from time to
time and offers preventive services to anyone who needs them.
 Families and Government
o Traditionally, family policy in the US has reflected the reluctance of government to get
involved in family life.
o There is often disagreement as to what form family policy should take
o Many people believe that family life should be private and free from government
intervention.
o The most prominent governmental policy affecting families is public welfare and
attendant policies involving child support by absent parents and public support for day
care while parents work.
 Devolution
Child and Family Services
 Principles of Child and Family Services4
o Principle 1: A safe and permanent home is the best environment for children
o Principle 2: emphasizes the need for children to live in families and also to be free from
physical neglect and abuse and sexual abuse
o Principle 3: If children are not safe at home: child welfare services operate under the
principle of supporting the principle of supporting the family through intensive
rehabilitation services.
o Principle 4: If the child must be removed for his or her own safety, family continuity is
the principle guiding placement decision.
 With relatives or others who have a relationship with the child given preference
for placement.
 Classification of Services
o Preventive and Supportive
 Support and strengthen family life
 To promote healthy development of children and adults
 To reduce risks to children
 To help families maintain connections with community institutions such as
schools, welfare and the workplace,
 May be called therapeutic, preventive of supportive.
o Protective
 For families who have fallen below minimally sufficient level of child rearing
and suffer child abuse and neglect
 Services include:
 Investigation of family’s situation and help in improving family life so
that the children can remain safely in the home.
o Foster care and Kinship Care
 Families who temporarily cannot maintain a minimally sufficient child-rearing
environment in the home.
 Children may be placed with relatives: kinship care, foster family, group home or
children’s institution
 Aspects of foster care services: arranging visitation
 Planning reunification as early as possible
o Adoption
 Available to children in need of a new permanent family
 Biological family relinquished them for adoption or had parental rights
terminated in court.
 Key services: helping child grieve for lost family and adjusting to new
family
o Protective and foster care services: not normally voluntarily sought
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Pyramid of Services pg 21
Activity: Two groups: create a Jamaican Pyramid of Services that are currently available
or that you would like to see.
 Child Welfare Outcomes
o Agencies required to identify ways to measure outcomes ;
 It is important for programs to identify outcomes that are appropriate to the type
of service they are offering
Culturally Competent Family and Child Services
 NASW Standards for Cultural Competence in Social Work Practice (pg 24)
o Ethics and Values
o Self-Awareness
o Cross-Cultural Knowledge
o Cross-cultural skills
o Service Delivery
 Program Example: Organizing Urban Families for Children’s Mental Health
The Organization of Services
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Child welfare agencies vary in size and auspices:
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Small agencies provide specialized services e.g. adoption or family treatment
o often under purchase-of-service agreements with the state
agency
Mental health centers, child guidance clinics, family service agencies and youth
service bureaus may all be midsize agencies. They more likely to provide several
child welfare services e.g. mental health centers: psych assessment, family
therapy, individual counseling, group work, and consultation to schools and to
juvenile court.
Common types are:
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The complex problems of children and families often require the
help of multiple service systems;
o Child welfare agencies are forming partnerships with mental
health organizations and substance abuse and domestic violence
centers to coordinate services to a family.
 One major problem in the child welfare system is the fragmentation of services; with related
service being provided by separate agencies e.g mental health and child protection
 Program Example: Child Welfare and Community and Community mental Health (pg 30)
o Do you see this fragmentation in Jamaican Child and Family Welfare Systems?
o Discuss, amalgamations or creations of new agencies that could address this problem.
Trends and Issues
 Child Welfare in a Global Context
o United Nations Convention on the rights of the child treaty: Did Jamaica sign?
 The Increasing Complexity of Family and Child Welfare Practice
 Community Approaches to Family and Child Welfare
Reporting: With the fear of retaliation; how do you handle reporting issues? Is retaliation a
legitimate concern” How would you handle it to lessen threat of harm?
Community as source of problem and the location of solutions? Can you make an argument for
one or both?
Possible Activity:
2011-2012 Child Welfare Budget for Jamaica: $60 Million