Kudos: Family Preservation Wikipedia Post

From time to time, REFORM Talk will offer our kudos to particularly insightful posts. Shockingly, Wikipedia correctly explains Family Preservation here.

Here are two excerpts that pleasantly surprised me by boldly stating the truth:
“Today, there are half a million children in foster care in the US. of those, more than 100,000 have no prospect of being reunited with family and could be adopted. At the same time, the demand for healthy, preferably white infants continued and with fewer American born babies being relinquished or removed by social services, private entrepreneurs stepped in using marketing techniques gleaned from previous employment as car parts salesman (Arty Elgart of The Golden Cradle), and people skills learned as flight attendants (adoption facilitator Ellen Roseman) to procure babies to meet the demand.

As the maternity homes and adoption agencies of the 60’s closed down, they were replaced by the privatization of the adoption industry which today is estimated to be $6.3 billion worldwide, and $2–3 billion in the U.S. The irrevocable rights of parents and the permanent removal and placement of children is arranged today is arranged by attorneys, physicians, and anyone who hangs out a shingle and calls their business an adoption agency. Adoption policy and procedure varies state to state but most states have no regulations requiring educational certification in the field of child welfare to arrange adoptions. Adoption agencies are licensed as any business. L. Anne Babb, adoptive parent and author of Ethics in American Adoption[9] notes: “In other professions and occupations, licensing or certification in a specialty must be earned before an individual can offer expert services in an area. The certified manicurist may not give facials; the certified hair stylist may not offer manicures ….Yet…individuals with professions as different as social work and law, marriage and family therapy, and medicine may call themselves ‘adoption professionals’.”

Globally 80% of children in orphanages have families that visit and intend to bring them home. The major cause for temporary care worldwide is poverty, not abuse, neglect or abandonment. Many others have been stolen, kidnapped or coerced from their families by black market baby brokers who sell them to orphanages who prefer to have them adopted internationally because it is moor lucrative. Westerners pay $40,000 and more per child, discouraging domestic adoptions in countries in South America, Asia, and Eastern Europe, all of which have been cited for child trafficking scandals. Children pass through so many hands before coming to the West—in a process adoptive father and child and family advocate David M. Smolin, Director, Center for Biotechnology, Law, and Ethics, Samford University, has identified as child laundering [10]—that the recipients have no way of verifying if the child they are adopting is in fact an orphan.

Domestically too, expectant mothers are pressured, and coerced, often taken across state lines, isolated, and exploited at a very vulnerable time. These mothers are also without resources and are given housing and medical care, but are pressured to ‘voluntarily’ sign papers relinquishing their parental rights or being held liable to repay those expense.”

“Criticism

When it comes to child welfare, all interested parties say they want what is in the best interest of children. The debate stems from what programs actually are in the best interest of the children. Family preservation advocates believe that children are safest and they receive the best outcome when kept in the care of their parents. They support providing in home services for at risk families that range from financial help to parenting classes. Proponents want to take the child out of the house and into the foster system so the child can eventually find permanent placement. They support that government financial aid goes toward foster care and placement programs. The most prominent debate over family preservation is child safety. Opponents of family preservation believe that it leaves the child in danger by leaving them in the home. They use extreme cases, such as those reported in the media in an attempt to polarize child safety and family preservation.[11] Family preservation is in definition and practice an attempt to keep children safe. The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform NCCPR defines family preservation as a “systematic determination of those families in which children could remain in their homes or be returned home safely, and provision of the services needed to ensure that safety.” They find real family preservation programs [12] to have a better safety track record than foster care. Their studies were based on larger segments of the population and included control groups, leaving them much more reliable and generalizable than the horrific case studies used by opponents.

Intensive Family Preservation Services [IFPS] are intensive, time-limited services provided for the family in their home. IFPS is designed to prevent the removal of children from the home in cases of abuse or neglect.[13] The NCCPR accuses their critics of ignoring all of their evidence by relying on one study that found no effects of intensive family preservation services [IFPS]. This study failed to randomly assign groups or provide services that were comparable to actual IFPS. Kirk and Griffith (2004) examined this study and finding major flaws, re-examined the ability of IFPS themselves. They found that IFPS to be effective in reducing out of home placements when the model is comparable and the services are appropriately targeted.

Family preservation advocates strive to protect children while empowering their families and communities. They believe that in most cases, children can best be protected by supporting their parents. The NCCPR remarks that poverty stricken families will not be able to receive the help they need under time limited assistance to care for their children, but once children are removed from the home, the foster care system may receive subsidies for an unlimited amount of time. Pelton (1993) finds that problems associated with poverty are being seen as child abuse and neglect. This leads to a situation of blaming the parent, which in turn hinders the promotion of necessary help. Criticism of IFPS based on both child safety and spending are both discredited by Pelton. As the poor lose their assistance, and in turn their children, the foster care system will become overloaded. This reduces the resources per child by case workers to place them or safe homes to care for them. As the budget goes increasingly towards investigating claims and placement, little money will be left over for any relevant services to help keep children in homes.[14] In effect, more children will enter and increase the already overwhelmed system. If foster homes become scarce, necessitating a greater use of group homes, children will be exposed to much higher rates of danger. The NCCPR reports ten times the rate of physical abuse and 28 times the rate of sexual abuse in group homes than in the general population. These are significantly higher than the rates for foster care which are three times and twice as likely, respectively. Thieman and Dail (1997) found that low income and welfare recipients are not more likely to have a child removed from their home.[15] This would suggest that low-economic resource families seemed to benefit from family preservation services as much as those with higher economic resources. This would discredit the idea that poverty alone endangers children. If poverty alone does not endanger children, than giving the same resources a child would receive in foster care to the family would seem the better outcome. This would first eliminate the unnecessary drain on the foster care system. Those that need to be removed for safety reasons would have greater resources, giving them a better chance to find a home and be monitored closely. Second, a child who does not enter the foster system is not affected by the possibility of the dangers existing in foster-care. And since only children considered safe are allowed to remain in the home, the proportion of endangered children will be decreased. Third, foster-care is the more expensive of the two options. The NCCPR estimates that IFPS actually produces on average $2.54 of benefits per dollar. Also child well-being is higher when children are kept in the home. The NCCPR found that pregnancy, juvenile arrests and youth unemployment were lower, even when they did not receive IFPS, but only the lesser conventional help offered by child welfare agencies. So it would be cheaper, safer, more efficient on our foster-care system and better on the well-being of children if they remain in their natural home. This is a very strong argument for family preservation advocates.”

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