Requirements for Prospective Foster Parent’s Testimony Essay Example

well-established system that helps a client and the agency to assess the needed capabilities. Other qualifications include: being in a position to provide care for twenty-four hours and supervision on a daily basis. Even financial stability is not dependent on child’s stipend, be patient, flexible and understanding, have a good sense, or humour. One should have a home with safety hazards and free from fire, undertake a check protective/criminal background thoroughly and be ready to adapt to teamwork.

Implication for policy and practice

The primary intention of the establishment of the child welfare system was not to provide the comprehensive wide range of the child services that are in demand today. There has been an increase in the requirement for intervention from other organization in the child care service provision despite the rise in the number of child welfare agencies. High level of poverty and many other social problems, as well as the challenges faced by the public child welfare systems, has made it difficult to provide such services to the population.
Many factors exist ranging from external, internal, structural and demographic that contributes to the full spectrum of the crisis of a system with inadequate resources and an increase in responsibilities. Drug abuse, health needs, inadequate housing, racial discrimination and parental incarceration are some of the challenges that affect the capacity of the child welfare systems together with the staff in the provision of services to the children and families it serves (Herbst & Tekin, 2010).

Changes in the ethnic and racial makeup of our country have imposed an immense challenge to the child welfare agencies and their staff. Ethnic and racial discrimination, cultural barriers have become rampant

in many social service systems including education, public health as well as in the child welfare systems and the judiciary. It has been an overwhelming task to identify the particular needs of multiple ethnic and racial groups and developing programs, practices and the best strategies to counter the unique circumstances especially the African American families that have been represented highly in the system more than a decade ago (Herbst & Tekin,2010).
The stressful nature of handling issues and working in the welfare system has led to an increase in the direct response to the problem presented above. Today’s complexity of the child welfare involved families together with ever changing policies and diminishing resources has led to requiring the welfare staff to have been equipped with expertise in psychology, social work, child development, job training and human resource enough other areas. The tension created by the media in exposing extreme cases on child abuse and negligence and the onslaught of bad publicity and negative attitude concerning child welfare systems has contributed to the insecurity, burnout and a high turnover in some of the child welfare agency workers.

Implications for practice

Policy makers and agency administrators are required to make considerations in their attempt to see how best to offer services to family and children, family and children with colour. These include workforce issues and the strategies that agencies are performed to cater to the needs of families and children with colour.

Workforce related issues

Agency administrators might have control over the types of individuals and families that handle but hardly do them have control over the environmental work they support and create the employees they choose to coordinate. For any child

welfare employee to feel efficient and confident and perform accordingly, they require support from the agency. This types of support include; administrative encouragement and support, oversight and supervision, manageable caseloads and adamant peer relationships. The absence of such discourages prospective foster parent to a great deal.

In addition to administrative support, a firm establishment of infrastructure which allows for flexible and responsive programming is required. The changes in the organizational infrastructure involve including an administrative officer from outside agencies, creating a strong leadership team and reorganizing the already existing staff to meet the new mandates, forming staff groups that ensure children remain in the same units and integrate more services such as adoption. Failure to incorporate infrastructural adjustments and improvements scare away the parents with prospects to join the foster agencies.

Children and families with colour

The current policy did not have a special consideration of handling children with colour. The plan should be structured in such a way there should be no traces at all associated with racial discrimination. Prospective foster parents will be reluctant if they find that they are required to foster children from a race that despise theirs. This calls for the establishment of a system that removes discrimination based on skin colour (Herbst & Tekin,2010).

Collaboration with other agencies

Limiting the foster parent is only to focus on the children where their responsibility is unfair. There should be a partnership between the foster parent and other organizations so that the parties involved providing the best and high-quality service required for the development of the child. With this type of collaboration, there is more room for prospective foster parents to increase the number of children they

can serve at a given time.

What Barriers are involved in fostering a child?

Forster parenting can be carried out by any interested party. That does not include the fact that not everyone can be good at it. There exist both internal and external factors that can limit anyone to become a foster parent (Cautley &Lichstein,n.d).This barrier ends in limiting the discouraging prospective adoptive parents thus reducing the number of individuals willing to offer welfare services to the needy children.
Before one chooses to foster any child, specials consideration on the effect this kind gesture might have the relationship the parent has with the biological children they possess. The parent might be welcoming and loving but eventually, their children end up giving the adopted child hell of a time and in some extreme cases the fostered child ends up running away (Herbst& Tekin, 2010).Otherwise, the parent may give the attention to the new family member at the expense of their children, making them feel neglected and might weaken the parent-child bond. Such family crises make those aspiring to adopt a child have a second thought about this issue (Cautley &Lichstein,n.d).

Sometimes despite every effort put by the foster parent, it is never possible to bond with the child. Each one of them feels like a stranger to the other. The attempt each party does to bond may not rhyme, and both live with the anxiety to please each other. (Shinkfield, 2007).Fostered children require time, attention and patience. Before engaging oneself, evaluation on the parent’s schedule is necessary to ensure that despite the willingness to make the life of the child right, they might end up making more difficult by

creating hopes that do not materialise (Herbst& Tekin, 2010).

The fear of unknown always scares the people who are paranoid of the eventuality of things not working out. By the fact that they have not had an experience in fostering, some people fear the experience might not give the end results expected and might prompt them to drop the matter altogether. In some case relative of the child might make attempts to make contact with the child. In spite of being relatives, some poison the mind of the child to the extent they change the child’s perception towards the fostering parent.
The means of livelihood between the new parent and the child should be confidential. Cases of breaching this secret agreement sometimes discourage the anticipated parents. Becoming a foster parent requires approval by the respective body. Those interested undergo checks to ensure they meet all the credential. Some agencies fail to give consent to some parents without a concrete reason to deny the approval (Shinkfield, 2007).

Effects of the barriers

The unfavourable obstacles and policies reduce the number of foster parents in the country. This leads to increase in the number of children yearning for care. Those children who are not in a position to survive in their current situations ends up dying, and others grow in harsh conditions and turn out to be criminals. Such children do not get enough education leading to an increase in the illiteracy levels (Herbst & Tekin, 2010).
The poverty levels increase for the children and families are vulnerable to each and every unfortunate eventuality that rises. The children who would have otherwise become a source of salvation to many become hapless and lost.

There is a strain in the already established foster agencies due to inadequate staff, and eventually, children receive poor quality services in the growth and some don’t get a chance to overcome the trauma they are in (Shinkfield, 2007).

Possible Recommendation(s)

To see into it that there are efficient systems to cater for children welfare, the existing policies should be revised and made favourable. Governments should set aside more funds to assist the child welfare agencies all over the country. Sufficient training should be offered to the fostering parent and at the same time improve the infrastructural facilities need to look after these children.
Additionally, the prospective parents should be encouraging and provided with the necessary training to overcome the personal barriers. The agencies should get rid of the bureaucratic procedures that eventually deny permission to the individuals interested in taking in foster children. The end results in recuperating the fostering systems are children who are disadvantaged getting a chance to lead a life close to normal. Poverty levels, crime and illiteracy levels will significantly reduce.

References

• Cautley, P., & Lichstein, D. The Selection of Foster Parents: Manual for Homefinders.
• Herbst, C., & Tekin, E. (2010). The impact of child care subsidies on child well-being. Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Shinkfield, C. (2007). An exploration of the experience regarding children and potential parents as they transition into a permanent placement arrangement.