Social work with children

Social Work With Children

In an analysis of the non-secure group home system in the United States, one needs to look at the foster care system in New York City and the Juvenile Justice group home system in California.

Administration for Child Services in New York

In New York City, when a child is put into foster care and encounters problems, they re-enter the program at a rate of 8.8%. Administration for Child Services (ACS) has committed to reducing this re-entry rate through better training of foster parents and caregivers to provide safe homes for children in foster care. ACS certifies foster parents and has a program to provide homes for children in need of care. Foster parents receive funding to care for the foster children dependent upon the level of difficulty the child presents (NYC, p. 1).

The child welfare system in New York City is largely dependent on voluntary agencies, who find themselves responsible for 90% of the children in the system by social service contract. Theses agencies must provide ACS with relevant and current information and produce the outcomes that ACS expects. This system, which has been in effect since 2000, has put demands on ACS that have improved its participation and produced better outcomes for the children and families in the foster care system.

However, children drop out of the program to become homeless and often find themselves into drugs and/or pregnant.

A recent National Drug Research Institute (NDRI) study investigating the relationship between trauma and substance use among New York City homeless youth found that a substantial portion of the youth they interviewed had been in foster care at some point prior to becoming homeless. Of the youth who had been in foster care, some became homeless because they left the foster care system, and others were discharged to homelessness or "aged out" [turned 18] with no place to call home (NYC, p. 1)

New York finds itself underbudgeted and underfinanced for both homeless people, especially youth. There is no safety net for youth between 16 and 21, even though that is the crucial time for development of a stable life for them. Youth who enter foster care and youth who find themselves homeless have life histories that are similar and which include emotional or physical abuse, family violence, mental illness, drugs and poverty, which induces many other stressors. There are a disproportionate number of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth in the foster care program, the homeless youth and runaway youth. This may be caused by their sexual preferences being rejected by the family and being "kicked out" of their homes to become homeless or to go to foster care. However, in a foster care home, or on the streets the same conditions may exist or be even more severe (Ayala, p. 1).

Youth report feeling unsafe in foster care, but the shriveling budget for ACS has resulted in an overly strained system with poorly-run facilities and an underpaid staff trying to function with overly-rigid rules. Many teen-agers run away from this system and those on the street do not want to go into it. Unfortunately, on the other end, the foster care system does not want the homeless or street youth over 18, so they return to the street, if youth are in the system already, they may return until they turn 21, but if they have never been in the system, they may not enter after they turn 18 (NYC, p. 1).

ACS has an improved policy of giving teenagers a goal of "independent living" if they wish. Ties to a family provides a safety net and prevents some homelessness that happens when youth are out of the system without preparation for independent living. Youth may elect to stay in the system, if they wish, until they are 21, but many wish to get out of the system if they have been a part of it for many years. Caseworkers may not discharge youth who have no stable housing option and it forbids them to discharge them into public shelters. Actually, many go to relatives or friends who are unprepared to care for them or who are reluctant to care for them. There are no aftercare specialists to develop relationships with teens who are about to be or have been discharged. There is also no emergency housing for youth who have been in the system needing temporary care when things do not go as planned during the first two years out of care. In New York City there are few beds for youth in general (NYC, p. 1).

Youth complain to caseworkers and other officials that they have not been sufficiently trained in living skills, including where to find educational services, vocational training, budgeting, entitlements they are eligible for or for housekeeping. These youth are entitled to Section 8 housing and medical benefits, but they do not know it. ACS does not provide this sort of education and therefore youth coming out of the foster care system are less prepared for life than their peers. Reducing the numbers of cases that caseworkers have would improve services and reduce the number of youth who must or want to leave the system and are unprepared for the unsafe life outside. An increase in the ACS budget would make this possible (Margolin, p. 1).

An interview was held with a young man named Calvin, whose mother had hit him with a belt and he had been removed from his home. His mother had never done this before, though she had hit him with her hand, but he had been acting up in school and over time she had become more and more frustrated with his actions, until finally, one day, the teacher had called to say he cursed at her in class.

That made her so mad that she got a belt and hit me with the buckle end of it. I screamed, it hurt so bad. I got welts on my arm and upper thigh from it. When I went to school the next day I had bad bruises that the other kids saw and it was reported. They called my mom and a police car came to the school and took me to the juvenile services center."

Calvin stayed in the juvenile system for over a year without ever seeing his mom. The ACS went to his house and got his younger sister, as well, and his mother was left alone. That made Calvin sad and frustrated. He wanted to see his mother and he felt guilty for having gotten in trouble. His mother had been into drugs briefly shortly after he was born and he had been removed from the home and put into foster care until she was clean. She was so afraid of losing her children after that that she never took drugs, but the one beating had taken away her children after all.

Because Calvin had been in the foster care system as a baby for a short time, he was considered to already be in the system. But no case workers had ever gone to his home to see how the family was faring. There had been several caseworkers who had been given their case file over the ten years that had passed, but not one of them had visited to see how things were going. If one of them had visited, then the problems that had begun when Calvin turned 12 might not have happened.

In the ACS foster care system, Calvin received counseling and so did his mother. He liked his counselor, he said, and she helped him understand what had been happening when he got so mad in school. He did not really know his dad very well. But he had always gone for regular visits to his dad's home, where his dad lived with his parents. During the visits Calvin's dad was often not there, but his grandfather was and made a point to spend time with the boy. Calvin grew very fond of his grandfather and when his grandfather died, he became very upset. He could not understand what had happened and why the one man he had admired had been taken away. Not only that, his father did not seem to care that his dad had died and he certainly did not care about Calvin. So Calvin got very angry. He was mostly angry at his dad. His anger was acted out in school, where he treated other kids and the teacher very badly.

At last my mom got some help from a lawyer and went to court to get me and my sister back. She learned about how to do it and even helped in the Child Welfare Organizing Project. She came to my foster parents' home and took me to school every day and also took me to doctor appointments and to my counseling sessions. I was able to go home for weekends after awhile and my sister came home on the weekends too.

I told her that there had been three caseworkers since I had been in foster care this time, but none of them had ever gone to visit my mom. She had been alone in all of this. It wasn't fair for her.

The third caseworker visited my mom and saw how hard she was trying. I was able to go home overnight and then, finally, we were all back together again after two years of being apart. I'll never forget how my being bad affected my family. It makes me mad, and mad at myself, but my counselor has helped me to understand what has happened and I can deal with it"

Calvin's mother is a more patient and understanding mother now and is currently a parent advocate for the ACS (Timmons, p. 1).

This story is a good story, compared to the story that a young girl named Peggy, who is still in the system, told.:

I am only eleven years old, but I have been in five different foster care homes. I try to be good, but somehow my foster parents get impatient with me, since I am so hyper, and take me back to the group home. I stay in the group home in the spells between foster homes, and once I even had to stay in an office building because there was no room in the group home. We didn't have showers or a kitchen in the office building, so we went to the restrooms at night, down the hall, and washed off in the sinks. We had cots put up in one of the offices and me and a whole bunch of other girls slept all together in one room. I remember my real mom some. She was young and pretty and blond. But she wasn't married and my dad wasn't married and they wouldn't marry each other, so I had to go. I want to be like my mom."

When I was ten I was finally put into a foster home where the people seemed to be really nice. My foster mother was really nice to me and cooked lots of good food for the family. There were two other foster girls in the family, too. I was the youngest. I had to sleep in the same room as the other girls because the house had only two bedrooms. But Pop sometimes came and got Tammy up in the night and took her somewhere for hours. I found out that he was making her do things that she didn't want to talk about, in the bathroom.

This began to make me and Trish real nervous. Tammy began to tell us other girls that we had better look out because when we got older Pop would do it to us, too, this 'molest' thing.

A didn't want to grow up, so I started peeing in my pants and getting my clothes dirty. I had temper tantrums like a baby on the floor. I acted like a baby. Mother couldn't understand what was wrong and tried to make me feel better. I couldn't tell her that I didn't want to grow up because I was afraid of Pop. He acted really nice and normal during the day."

Finally, I was so bad in school that the teacher said she couldn't teach me any more. She had sent reports home to my foster parents and warned them that I was uncontrollable. Finally, one day when I had done something really bad, I was suspended from school and my foster mother came and got me. She was crying. She said she was going to have to send me back to the juvenile system because she couldn't take it any more. She didn't understand why I was acting so bad when I had been so good when I arrived.

It made me very upset that she was crying and I didn't know what to do, so I said I wanted to be a baby because I didn't want to grow up and let Pop molest me. She stopped crying and was quiet for awhile, and then she began to ask more questions. When I finally answered them, she was quiet and the next day we all and our bags were picked up by the caseworker. My foster mother had also packed a bag and said she was leaving, too. It was a very sad scene. We were all crying except for Tammy, who was smiling and acting stupid.

Now I'm back at the group home and I hope I get a good foster family next time. But I don't really care. I have lots of friends in the home."

Nearly half of all girls in foster care have been pregnant by the time they turn 19. Almost one-third of foster children have had a child by 19, whereas the national average is that only 12.2% of girls aged 19 have had a child. Foster children with children themselves are overwhelmed and unprepared for life. Their children are sometimes put into the foster system, as Peggy was. The figures make things clear. There is a need for group homes for teenaged foster children who are mothers that are sufficiently funded so that these mothers may be educated, get training on how to be a parent and obtain a degree so they can work and support their child. In these homes, there needs to be security and privacy for each new mother (Hope, p. 2).

In a real-life case, Melanie (not her real name), a mother of a newborn son, was sent to the New York Foundling's Crisis Nursery Program in lower Manhattan where she could get up to three weeks of free childcare for parents facing a crisis. She also received emergency cash and goods, as well as counseling to deal with city agencies and the service plan that connected her to support in her home community. She was relieved to find a place she would leave her baby for awhile, while she received guidance on being a parent. She had been a victim of domestic abuse, but had decided to keep her son when she found she was going to be able to keep him safe. The counselor and services helped her obtain an order of protection against her abuser, counseled her on domestic abuse and gave her information about support groups and services.

Keeping families safe and together is the goal of the Crisis Nursery. They offer services that parents need in a crisis because facing a crisis without support can break up a family that normally would have stayed together. And trying to hand crises alone can be more than some people can handle, so the city will bear the burden of raising children in foster care if the family breaks up. The Crisis Nursery is needed to keep families safe now and in the future.

But many parents do not trust them. Some have been in foster care themselves or had bad experiences with agencies. "Because the nursery gets funding from ACS and must report evidence of physical abuse, parents fear that it wants to take their children away from them." The message that the Crisis Nursery is trying to get out is their goal is to help parents care for their children, without separating families. "We understand that they don't know who we are," said Pena. "The challenge is fear, and we work with that." (Walker, p. 1).

Need for Group Homes

There is a need for group homes in New York. As is outlined in the second half of this paper, the California Youth Authority (CYA) (State agency that oversees correctional facilities and supervises paroles for youth aged 12-24) has created many group homes throughout all the counties in California for youth with problems. This small setting, community-based facility seems to be the most successful of all types of treatment facilities, with a 90% success rate for the treatment of youthful offenders. It is evident that there is a need for group homes in the New York foster care system.

Group homes are obviously needed for children who are between foster homes. An office building is not the place for children to live, no matter how long or short their stay.

Group homes are needed for foster girls who are pregnant and still in school, as they have special needs for education, training in parenthood, vocations and health needs.

Group homes are needed for parents who have a crisis and need a place to leave their children while they adapt to such crises. The Crisis Nursery is a good example, but there need to be more of these available and in other sites.

Group homes are needed for young offenders, as outlined in the Juvenile Justice System program below.

It appears that the most successful means of treatment and care are small facilities in neighborhoods or communities where the clients receive individual care and attention. Statistics show that the success of a program may depend on the individuals' place of treatment, and small, community-based facilities have the highest rates of success.

The California Department of Juvenile Justice

In the past decade, Californians voted to support the building of larger correctional facilities and tougher crime legislation, like Proposition 21, because of a perception that today's youth are more violent and are committing more crimes. The actual trends in youth felony and misdemeanor arrests since 1991 show a distinct downward trend from 72,906 youth felony arrests in 1991 to 46,376 in 2000.

The Juvenile Justice Group Home System

The Juvenile Justice Group Home System in California has a goal, that their services should strengthen the family and the family's capacity to provide guidance and supervision for their young members. All the agencies that work with youth and families coordinate and integrate efforts to protect the community and youth from criminal activity through placing the youth in home confinement.

Learning disabilities and academic failure often contribute to delinquency, so all agencies need to work together. While students should be held accountable for disruptive behavior by being placed on home detemtion, they must also be supported in education attainment, so that they may be successful as students, even though consideration may be needed for their unique circumstances.

The largest-ever national study of American teenagers, conducted by the U.S. Surgeon General and released in December 2000, concluded that young people who do not do well in school are especially at risk of unhealthy behavior. Academic failure was determined to have a direct, causal effect on delinquency. (Principles, p. 4)

Research has shown that putting youth in an institution has bad effects on young people and actually increases the likelihood of future criminal behavior and removing youth from school, community and home environments creates alienation and reinforces criminal tendencies.

High rates of return show up the failure of the system: 91% of youth paroled from the California Youth Authority in 1986-87 were arrested again within three years. New systems relying on community-based alternatives and small community models, have return rates of a low 11% (DeMuro, p. 6).

Not only does it not work, but institutionalization of youth is expensive. The California Youth Authority spends the average of $48,400 per year on nearly 6,000 wards in 15 training schools and camps. This is more than twice the cost of tuition at a state university for a year. The money used to institutionalize youth could be used in community youth programs and get better results.

Rehabilitation is the primary goal for youth, compared to the criminal justice system since its inception. Leading the public to be tough on crime has led to a shift in sentiments toward the treatment of offenders who are of juvenile age. Today the mission of CYA seems to be to protect the public from youthful criminal activity. But before anything can get better, the public and the State need to commit to the rehabilitation of youth (California, p. 1).

Home confinement is the most common alternative today, to detention in a Juvenile Hall. It is cost-effective and successful. Some counties have shown a 90% success rate and some have shown higher, the rate being determined by how many youth appear at all their hearings and do not re-offend. Those who live at home or with relatives have a strict curfew and their activities are restricted to school and church or a like agreed-upon schedule. Unscheduled visits or phone calls from the probation officers are sufficient to supervise them. If they do not comply, they are moved to a more restricted type of detention.

Community Supervision also works with Home Confinement by assigning a community representative to every case. Community representatives might be volunteers or local nonprofits staff or other private agencies familiar with the neighborhood who can provide direct supervision and advocacy. The youth might be assigned to do some community service that the community representative oversees.

Youth who need more intensive supervision receive 6-12 hours of daily supervision and structured activities at the Day and Evening Reporting Centers. Youth not enrolled in school would be good candidates for a day center, because more structured time is needed. Evening Reporting Centers are for youth who are enrolled in school, and the after-school hours are when most kids get into trouble.

The Reporting centers have recreational, counseling and tutoring activities. They are not treatment centers, which are for youth with assessed problems. These Reporting centers have different expectations for post-disposition youth found guilty of specific crimes.

Non-Secure Shelters are appropriate for youth who need even higher levels of supervision or for those without a suitable or safe home environment.

Residential staff provide supervision 24 hours a day seven days a week in the unlocked Shelter. There is usually an on-site case manager and a low staff to youth ratio. Recreation, tutoring and life skills training are the activities and education provided. Shelters should never have to be used for long-term placement, but are meant only for temporary pretrial detention.

Secure detention in a small-scale regionally-based locked residence when necessary, can offer the more serious cases individual programming, attention and lead to lower recidivism rates.

After trial, post disposition models are still community-based for juveniles who have been sentenced to incarceration in an institution. Following a hearing for sentencing, offenders are placed somewhere in a community-based program, based on the evaluation of the individual youth's criminal offense, his or her risk to offend again, and their home environment.