Foster Care Alternatives for Child Abuse

Child Abuse

Foster Care Alternatives/Intervention

Value of Foster Care

Foster care is a program that is in place to help children who can no longer live with their birth parents due to abuse or neglect. Experience has demonstrated that successful intervention and treatment rely a great deal on the quality of the caseworker's relationship with the children and family (DePanfilis & Salus, 2003). The attributes that contribute to a positive therapeutic relationship include: non-possessive warmth, friendliness, genuineness, respect, affirmation and empathy (the Therapeutic Alliance, n.d.). One of the most important therapeutic components to foster care placement for a social workers is respect. In order for any relationship to be successful both parties in it must respect each other. This would be an important component for social workers to have in order to be successful. The most important component for a foster child would be genuineness. These children have been thorough a lot and they really just want to know that there is someone who really cares about them and is being genuine about any of it.

Alternative to Foster Care

There are some kids that are in need of foster care due to their circumstances at home but standard foster home placement is not appropriate for them. These kids might include those that have severe health problems or developmental disabilities. The type of care that these kids need is known as therapeutic foster care. This involves placement of children with foster families who have been specifically trained to care for children with certain medical or behavioral requirements. Treatment foster care programs normally entail more training for foster parents, offer more support for children and caregivers than standard family foster care, and have lower limits on the quantity of children that can be cared for in the home. Treatment foster care is favored over residential or group care because it preserves children in a family situation (Treatment Foster Care, n.d.).

Enhancements to Foster Care

Concurrent planning is a new foster care case management tool that is used by caseworkers and other child welfare staff members, where they pursue the main goal of family reunification, while at the same time, they are also laying out a possible permanency plan for the child. This planning is done in order to decrease the total amount of time a child remains in foster care before being permanently placed with a family (Concurrent Planning, 2012). I like this approach to dealing with kids in foster care. The ultimate goal should be to have a little contact with the system as possible. The foster families and the birth families should work together to make sure that the child has the safest and most healthy environment possible that includes the birth family. The goal in the end is to help the families with whatever issues they are having so that they are able to care for their children once again. This approach will probably not work for every child and every family but it should be used as much as it possible.

Challenges to Working in a Bureaucracy