Family and Child Welfare
Services
Chapter 13
Introduction
• The family is recognized as humanity’s basic
institution.
• No other established pattern has been found
more effective in molding the personality of
children and adults.
• The family is the cradle for children, not only
physically but psychologically.
• Many experts indicate that a child’s basic
personality traits have been developed by the
time he or she is two years of age, with the
family playing the major role in their formation.
Marriage and Family Counseling
• Divorce will occur approximately 4,000 times in an
average day resulting in more than a million divorces
each year.
• In the 90’s the trend of approximately half of all
marriages ending in divorce has remained constant with
a higher percentage of divorces occurring with
subsequent marriages.
• When couples divorce, the income for a now single
mother decreases by about two-thirds.
• Divorce has been identified as a risk factor for children to
be abused, to be involved in higher crime rates, to abuse
drugs, and to have lower academic achievement.
Marriage and Family Counseling
• There are more than 100,000 desertions each
year in which the husband walks out the door,
never to return.
• In addition, desertions by wives are increasing at
a startling rate.
• There are other thousands of “psychologically
shattered” homes in which husband, wife, and
children walk the same carpets, eat at the same
tables, but socially and emotionally lives miles
apart.
• Such homes provide barren or meager
emotional climates for children as well as adults.
Marriage and Family Counseling
• “Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the
multitude of counselors there is safety”
(Proverbs; 11:14).
• In modern times marriage counseling was
instituted with the development of clinics,
particularly premarital clinics, in Germany and
Austria.
• In the United States the roots of professional
marriage counseling are many and varied.
• The most significant one was the Family Welfare
Association of America, established in 1911 to
promote family agencies and services.
Kinds of Services
• Counseling in this service area may be divided
into three kinds or levels: premarital, marriage,
and family.
– Premarital counseling is the assistance of a person or
couple in regard to courtship and marital plans and
problems.
– Marriage counseling is concerned with husband-wife
relationships, plans and problems.
– Family counseling includes the husband-wife-children
constellation.
Kinds of Services
• Social workers use a variety of helping methods
and approaches that include:
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Role theory
Exchange theory
Transactional analysis
Gestalt therapy
Systems theory
family therapy
Behavior modification
Psychoanalytical approach
Reality therapy
Solution-focused therapy
Kinds of Agencies
• Much counseling is done by social workers in county
welfare departments including work with families in the
TANF program.
• Many courts have social workers attached to their
organizations.
• Others play important roles in university and college
counseling centers.
• Social workers play important roles in private family
counseling agencies such as Family Service America.
• Social workers are in private practice in marriage and
family counseling both on a full-time and part-time basis.
Battered Women
• A statement by the American Medical Association affirms
that as many as a third of women’s injuries coming into
emergency room are not from accidents.
• Family violence is one of America’s most critical health
issues.
• Research focusing on children exposed to this behavior
has determined that it has profound effects on them.
• Boys who witness family violence have higher rates of
aggressive behavior and are at a higher risk of becoming
batterers as adults.
• Children exhibit behavioral problems including clinging
and aggressive behaviors and disruptions in their sleep
and toileting.
Battered Women
• Social agencies in almost all cities have set up facilities
to protect and care for those who are forced to leave
their homes because of physical and/or emotional
abuse.
• Many agencies provide temporary housing where they
may stay for anywhere from a few hours to several
weeks until permanent facilities can be found.
• Counseling is provided in individual and group sessions,
and support groups are available for continuing help.
• U.S. Catholic bishops have declared that parishioners
are not required by their religion “to submit to abusive
husbands.”
Rape Crisis
• Because of the need and demand, rape crisis
centers offering 24 hour help have been
organized in almost all cities.
• These centers provide immediate crisis
intervention, including information regarding
availability of medical help and support in
contacting the police.
• Later the centers sustain victims through the
lengthy adjustment period that is usually needed
to restore feelings of safety, self-worth, and
freedom.
Family Disorganization and Child
Abuse and Neglect
• A great many children live in home with
only one parent.
• A substantial number of children living in
two-parent homes have a stepparent.
• By the year 2010 more than half of all
families may be stepparent families.
• A disproportionate number of children of
divorced parents are dependent upon
public assistance.
Family Disorganization
• Day-care centers have mushroomed, and problems related to caring
for babies and small children of working mothers are an important
policy issue debated today at the highest levels of government.
• Single parents shouldering the responsibility of two parents are often
unable to provide the role models, parenting, or needed income
found in households with both parents.
• Many changes affecting the family have occurred in social roles and
role expectations of individual members.
• In America in 1850, when 85 percent of the total population lived in
rural areas and only 5 percent in cities of 100,000 or more, children
were valued for their work and productive effort.
• There was a radical change in the picture a century later, when
about 60 percent of the total population was living in 168
metropolitan areas.
Family Disorganization
• In 1948, 11 percent of all married women
in the United States with children six years
and younger were in the workforce.
• In the year 1997, the number had risen to
63 percent.
• For single mothers, 61 percent worked
outside the home.
• The majority of working mothers are
employed full time.
Child Abuse and Neglect
• Research showed that 60,000 children were being abused each
year.
• The 1974 Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act was enacted
and aimed at prevention, identification, and treatment of this
problem.
• The act provided funds to persons and agencies willing and able to
take action but who previously had been hampered in their efforts by
lack of money.
• Recent figures by the Department of Health and Human Services
(2000) estimate that a little less then three million reports were
received by social service agencies in 1998.
• While children may be abused by anyone, parents of maltreated
children have been found to be the majority of the perpetrators.
Child Welfare Services
• Child welfare is:
– A field of service
– A social work practice area that encompasses a
variety of child welfare activities
– A practice field that focuses attention on issues,
problems and policies related to the welfare of
children
– The application of knowledge and skill to problems of
children
– The enhancement of social functioning of children
Child Welfare
• Child welfare service include provisions for
children in their own homes, in substitute family
homes, and in many institutions.
• Statutory provisions in most states stipulate that
except for the most compelling reasons, a child
should not be deprived of a home or of the
opportunity to be nurtured by his or her parents.
• Only in the event of major, irreparable
breakdown in family life is it desirable to
separate children permanently from their natural
parents.
Foster Care of Children
• Foster care is the care of children in arrangements that
are substitutes for care by natural parents.
• Foster care is usually preferable as a treatment mode for
babies and young children.
• Since the mid-1980’s is was estimated that 520,000
children were in foster care homes in the United States.
• This number has nearly doubled in the past 20 years.
• Children were found staying in foster care longer (5
years or more) and more were entering foster care than
were leaving.
Foster Care
• Foster care is not indicated for children
who have a caretaking parent who is out
of work.
• Children may be placed in foster care
when the parents voluntarily seek a
placement opportunity.
• Children may be placed in foster care by
court commitments if they are dependent,
neglected, or delinquent.
Group Living Arrangements
• Group living may be the treatment of
choice for the child who has experienced
prolonged emotional deprivation.
• An aggressive, acting-out child who
cannot relate to adults or accept substitute
parental ties may be a good candidate for
care in a group home.
The Foster Parent Movement
• The stated reasons for the organization of
the Foster Parent Movement include the
following purposes:
– To improve the quality of life for children in
foster care
– To raise foster care to a higher plane of
regard
– To effect legislation that concerns children and
natural parents.
Adoption Services
• The first legislation on adoption in the United
States was enacted in 1851 in Massachusetts.
• The number of children placed for adoption in
the United States increased from 17,000 in 1937
to approximately 169,000 in 1971.
• In 1982 the total number of adoptions had
dropped to 141,861, with 50,720 of these being
unrelated.
• Today, it is estimated that one million children
live in adoptive homes in this country.
Adoption Services
• The number of infants available for adoption through
agencies has decreased in the last decade because of:
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Family planning
Legalization of abortions
Acceptance by society of the single parent status
An increase in the number of independent placements
Changes in values of society
The Supreme Court’s ruling that natural fathers in out-of-wedlock
births have legal rights to their offspring
– Income maintenance programs, food stamps, and subsidized
housing for single parent families
– The mandating of education from pregnant teenagers
– The reduction in the number of maternity homes.
Adoption Services
• Children are placed in adoptive homes by one of
two methods, either by social agencies licensed
to place children or by interested, independent
parties.
• Social work supports agency placements
because children, the adopting parents, and the
natural parents are provided safeguards in
agency arrangements not available in
independent placements.
• Independent placement of children are legal in
all but six states.
Adoption Services
• Of the young women in the United States
who become pregnant between the ages
of 15 to 19, only 5 percent will place their
child for adoption.
• Black market baby adoptions are made:
– Independent of agencies
– Do not have social sanctions
– Are made for financial considerations.
Protective Services
• In one sense, all child welfare work is protective
work.
• Protective services are aimed at preventing
abuse, neglect, and exploitation of children.
• Their aim is to preserve the family unit by
assisting parents to develop the capacity for
rearing children.
• The focus in protective care is on the family
where unsolved problems have led to neglect
and/or abuse and have become a hazard to the
physical and emotional well-being of children.
Physical Neglect and Abuse
• A dramatic increase in the number of teenage
pregnancies is reported with most young women
keeping their babies.
• The tenfold increase in child abuse is assumed
to be referable in a large measure to teenage
mothers who are not prepared for parenthood.
• Teen pregnancies can be a national disaster
when as many as 8 out of 10 young women who
give birth are between the ages of 15 and 17,
many never finish school, 90 percent are
unemployed, and 70 percent are on welfare.