Therapeutic foster care and concurrent planning for abused children

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.

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

Working within a bureaucracy can be a very challenging thing to do. Bureaucracies are often laden with rules and regulations that have to be overcome in order to get things accomplished. A lot of times these rules and regulations have been in place since the beginning of time and may or may not work anymore. But getting the rules changes is almost impossible. Most bureaucracies have the attitude that this is the way we have always done it so this is how we are going to continue to do it. One of the drawbacks of being a social worker and working within a bureaucracy is that of compassion fatigue. This is an issue that those who have a job helping other people often suffer with. This happens when people get so frustrated with what they are trying to do that they become negative and wonder if it is worth it in the end. There are a number of things that a person can do to fight this. These things include such simple practices as regular exercise, healthy eating habits, enjoyable social activities, journaling, and restful sleep (What is Compassion Fatigue, 2012).