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| November/December 2005 October, 2005 |
Social Work and Voluntary Child Welfare Services: Innovation and Anticipating Future Needs Philip Coltoff, LMSW, Former Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director, Children's Aid Society The Children’s Aid Society has long been in the field of child welfare. In fact, most in the field would acknowledge that Children’s Aid, in a sense, began the foster care movement in America in the mid 1800’s with what was then called the “Free Home” movement. The Orphan Train movement (Free Home) responded to the over 100,000 New York City “street kids” who were abandoned by their parents during the Industrial Revolution. They were sent by train to the Midwest and Southwest where farm families accepted them into their homes and provided a safe, and in most cases, loving environment. The older children were expected to do their share of work, whether on the farm or at home. The program worked for many, not for all, but the results were primarily positive since a majority of the youngsters were legally adopted by their families. Other agencies also joined in sending youngsters to families in the Midwest — The Little Wanderers Program in Boston, The Foundling in New York City run by Catholic Charities and Children’s Village. Our view in contemporary times is that while foster care is of course necessary for some, it is not the ultimate solution for children, or families for that matter, and, at best, should be seen as temporary. But temporary does not mean seven years or even four years in care. Service Innovations Emerging from Children’s Aid Some years ago Children’s Aid established a program called “12 Months to Permanency” which directed our staff to complete the planning process and move a child to an appropriate, permanent avenue of planning within 12 months. We believe that our direction in this program helped establish the notion of concurrent planning common in the child welfare field today. This approach starts at the very beginning of the process and sets into motion the options of return to family or adoption if reunification is not possible, and serious planning for those youngsters who are older and are aging out of the system. Over the last 40 years, The Children’s Aid Society has consistently viewed child welfare services as synonymous with child placement. Child placement is at the very end of the continuum of care with child welfare services constituting the work done in communities, by community centers, settlement houses, Y’s and other indigenous organizations dedicated to helping children and in many cases sustaining families and community life. It is for that reason that Children’s Aid spends three quarters of its $80 million budget on such true, primary preventive services within our community centers and community schools that are open 300 days a year, six or seven days a week. We completely endorse the ACS’s direction established under Commissioner Scoppetta and currently carried forward by Commissioner Mattingly to concentrate on preventive services in communities and to connect child and family services in ways that are continuous and sustainable. We believe that these basic preventive services must include after school programs, health and mental health services and community re-entry programs and must not rely on one-shot funding or only in “reinvestment dollars.” Such infusion of dollars is a good beginning and it allows the program to get started, although not necessarily to have sustainable legs. Primary, secondary, and tertiary services must find a funding home and must include programs that sustain family life so that they are not geared only to children at risk of placement. Need to Sustain Foster Care Infrastructure for the Future We are concerned that myopic thinking on the part of some can lead them to believe that the low census of children entering foster care will always be the case. We were pleased that Commissioner Mattingly recognized this and that while we all applaud the low census figure today, we acknowledge that another Crack or AIDS epidemic, or a significant downturn in the economy could cause a precipitous increase in the number of children under care. Therefore, it is important to sustain the infrastructure of foster families and even institutional beds that may be required in the future. We should not always be facing emergencies or crises for lack of funding. We recall that, prior to the Crack epidemic, the system was down to 17,000 children, and, in a short couple of years, that figure jumped to 50,000. Let’s not risk repeating those tragic circumstances. Unfortunately, our science and art does not allow us clarity in predicting the future. We must also give consideration to the 100,000 children who are authoritatively estimated to be in the care of grandparents or other family members. They are not included in the foster care census and therefore these families, most of whom are immigrants, do not receive the support provided by our system. This should give us pause as, over the next several years, their situations change and their needs evolve. It is equally important for social workers to recognize that when we think of foster care and child welfare, we have to think of poverty. Until we effectively deal with the causes of poverty and until we effectively deal with the causes of racism and prejudice, we will be dealing only with temporary solutions. It is our responsibility to think in terms of the larger policy issues which address the cause and not just the condition. Social Work Contributions – at Clinical and Policy Levels Social workers have made an enormous contribution to the child welfare field not only in diagnosis and treatment but in suggesting policy changes such as permanency and concurrent planning, better case management, and training of court personnel including attorneys and family court judges. The future of child welfare, which will always be a major field of practice for social work, can indeed be a rich one if our focus remains steadily on the child, the family, the community, and a longer range view of needs and services, as opposed to residual approaches that only respond to crises. We have made great strides. We have influenced political leaders and policy makers. We have in large measure delivered the goods. We should be proud of our accomplishments and keep a careful eye on future developments.
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