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Children and young people current legislation
Identify key legislation in relation to children and young people
Children and young people current legislation
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For me, social work is a calling to bring advantages to the disadvantaged and my worldview is informed by my desire to do this kind of advocacy work. Being a foster youth, myself, I can speak to both micro and macro aspects of social inequality in this country. Moreover, my life experience has been both educational and motivating in my desire to pursue a graduate degree in Social Service because I have not only lived within the broken system, but I have also analyzed it through a variety of theoretical frameworks to better understand the problems and their solutions. My most purposeful consideration, the connection between educational services for foster youth and foster youth performance in higher education, has helped me to contextualize my own circumstances and provided me with a unique perspective through which I have been able to develop relevant and applicable solutions. It was in my second year of college, upon transferring to Hofstra University, when I realized how much harder my experience as a foster youth made college for me. Because of this, I decided to dissect Administrative Children 's Services …show more content…
I discovered I was entitled to an attorney and began to appear before judges in ACS courtrooms, challenging public policy as it exists. As a result, I saw change on a micro and macro level. On a micro level, I was able to receive mentor services, a laptop, and semesterly care-packages through my discovery of Foster Care to Success and New Yorkers for Children, scholarship money through Education Training Voucher, and support for my room and board expenses through Catholic Guardian Services. On a macro level, as result of a court case in which I argued for allowance for essentials in college, ACS reassessed their policy previously withholding allowance from foster youth away at
As an intern at Eggleston Family Service I was assigned to overlook children in foster care and their adjustment to their placement. One of my cases was unique from the others because it involved a teenage boy that was close to emancipation. He was 17 years old and eager to leave the foster care system. He told me he was tiered of moving from placement to placement and wanted to be independent. The problem was that he did not have a plan after emancipation. He did not know where to go and had no income. He was determined to never see another social worker in his life. Clients have the right to self-determination no matter what decision they make but seeing this young man with no idea on what to do was alarming. I had to convince him how important it is to have a
While in Cleveland, Antwone experienced many negative community influences. As a foster child, he was placed in a low income/high street crime area (Washington, 2002), which is typical of the majority of foster placements (Shook et al., 2009). While growing up in his second foster placement, Antwone’s friends often bullied him. Also, foster care social workers were not attentive to their charge.
Low educational achievement for foster youth was a pressing concern. A study completed by Ehrle and Geen (2002) using a phone survey of 44,000 foster care providers across the United States found that 55% of voluntary kinship care providers did not have a high school degree, this indicated that may care providers lack the knowledge and understanding to help foster youth be prepared academically. After studying over 1000 foster youth Pecora et al (2006) found, about one third of all foster youth repeated a grade in school. In addition, Vacca (2007) identified reasons that foster youth struggled in the school setting. “Foster youth will typically not have any consistent parent advocacy or representative in the creation and implementation of the educational plan for graduation” (p. 67). With primary and secondary education a struggle for foster youth, it was no surprise that higher education was not something foster youth had been prepared for. In a combination survey and interview study titled “Pathways to College for Former Foster Youth: Understanding Factors That Contribute to Educational Success” Merdinger, Hines, Osterling, and Wyatt (2005) studied more than 200 former foster youth and found that “overall 63.8 percent [of former foster youth] reported that the foster care system did not prepare them very well for college” (p.
Many reasons exist as to why the foster system is failing and a major one is the number of children in the program. Although the number of children in the foster care system has decreased about 11% since 2002, “…experts worry that the trend might now go into reverse” (Protecting 47). “In 2008 there were 463,000 children in the foster care system” (47), due to the actions of parents such as abuse, neglect and the use of drugs and/or alcohol can cause a child to be placed in foster care. These actions cause the number of children in the system to increase. In order for this number to decrease dramatically programs must be put in place to help find enough, stable homes for foster children. As a result of the economy, many states have “considered cutting down on child-welfare services, such as benefits for foster parents and the number of social workers they employ” (47). If there is a lack of social workers, it is less likely that a child will be placed in a home quickly. Wi...
In conclusion, child protective intervention services through foster care have been the responsibility of provincial and territorial governments in Canada. These governments provide these services to children deemed to be in need of protection temporarily or permanently. However, the country has been faced with several concerns regarding its foster care system because it contributes to increased homelessness, criminal activity, and inability to achieve higher education for children aging out of foster care. These problems are attributed to the lack of legislative provisions and policies in Canada that promote effective transition from foster care to adulthood. Therefore, the Canadian government needs to identify and implement effective transition programs and supports into current policies to improve outcomes for young people aging out of foster care.
“Every year more than 25,000 youth age out of the foster care system” (Jansson, 2014, p.62). “As youth in foster care mature into adulthood, they face enormous challenges, including lack of family support; educational deficiencies; employment and income problems; inadequate or inappropriate living arrangements;
Personal statement. In contrast with the formal writing sample, we use the personal statement to get to know you a little better. The personal statement should be a maximum of 1700 words. Please use the personal statement address the following three questions:
Imagine you have just turned 9 years old and in a whirlwind of uncertainty you have just been removed by Child Protective Services from the only home you have ever known. You have been subjected to trauma; physically abused, verbally abused, and to some extent neglected as well. You now live in a temporary shelter where you are housed with 8 other children your age being taken care of by various staff; you are scared and lost, unsure about your future. You are forced to leave the only school you have ever attended in order to attend a school closer to your new “placement.” You have been torn from your family and friends making you feel all the more alone and frightened. This process of movement in school and placement will occur several times over the next few years placing you in a continual state of chaos. Each school transition moves you further behind in a perpetual state of academic catch up. Although this story was hypothetical, this is the long-standing reality for many foster youth. The actual implications of real life experiences for foster youth encompass personal, emotional, and educational problems. This
The foster system is beyond corrupted. There is low opportunities for kids with nothing to grow up and be someone. The system is bringing kids down and ruin whatever hope they had. Changes need to be made to insure the happiness of the orphans and foster children. Foster kids aren’t reunited with families, mistreated, and abused. This all happens under the foster system that takes place today. The system needs to change and fight for the children. The system needs to change for the better.
Problems in the society such as poverty, homelessness, unemployment, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, unequal education, family and community violence, and racism all can affect families and impact child welfare and the system itself (Chipungu and Goodley, pp. 76, 2004) There is often a incongruity between the services being offered to children and families in foster care and what they actually need. One example that Chipungu and Goodley (2004) made was birth parents being offered training and counseling when services such as housing assistance and childcare are more critically needed but not available (pp. 79).
Each year, six hundred and fifty thousand children in the United States spend time in foster care (Children’s Rights “Adoptions” 1). But most people do not know that because most people are among the other seventy three million, two hundred and ninety one thousand, eight hundred and forty eight people who live in stable homes. The majority of the population does not know the faults of the foster care system, because most have not lived it. In the mid nineteenth century, the foster care system was established. Since then, there have been many developments to the system, and today it is imperfect and inadequate. All across the United States, the foster care system needs to be reformed and now is the perfect time because there is a growing number
Since beginning my college career at CCU I have begun to dream bigger than I had ever thought possible. God has put a calling on my heart to help teens deal with life issues and show them his plan and purpose for their lives. Being a youth leader for the past several years, has enabled me to do just that. However, that calling has reached a new level because of my recent involvement with a couple students in the foster system and visiting one of them in the local youth shelter. This recent experience has not only touched my heart deeply, but also fueled my passion to a new height. According to the AFCARS Report (2015), there were 415,129 children in foster care as of September 30, 2014. Of those 415,129 children 264,746 entered the foster care system in FY 2014, and 107,918 were waiting for adoption. Of the
Foster youth faced many barriers when it came to education. There has been an abundance of research and data completed with the intent of identifying barriers to education for foster youth. Among the previously completed research was a study by Zetlin, Weinberg, and Shea, (2006), titled, Seeing the Whole Picture: Views from Diverse Participants on Barriers to Educating Foster Youths. These three authors built on prior data to establish foster youth as a vulnerable population. The peer reviewed article expressed the need for collaborative support between the child welfare system, the schools and other community resources to address the profound needs of underperforming foster youth in education. The authors used an exploratory study bringing together focus groups consisting of current and former foster youths, caretakers, school representative’s child welfare representatives, researchers and policy makers. The objective of the focus groups was to identify and discuss barriers to learning and achievement and strategies to address educational hurdles facing foster youth in California.
On October 7, 2008, President Bush signed into law the Fostering Connection to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, H.R. 6893 (now P.L. 110-351). With the enactment of this landmark legislation, courts, advocates, and child welfare professionals will have new resources and opportunities to create critically needed supports to meet the needs of young adults in foster care. For the first time, effective October 1, 2010, federal funds will support state efforts to extend foster care services and oversight well beyond age eighteen. Yet these new opportunities also create new challenges, as states consider how and if to opt into this new legal landscape, and professionals in the court system and child welfare arena begin to conceptualize best practices to address the needs of these young adults. (M.A. Krinsky, pgs.
Many children each year wait in foster care to find a family. According to the Child Welfare Gateway, on any day in the U.S. there are about 415,000 children in foster care, and in the year 2014, more than 22,000 young adults aged out of foster care, going out into the world without a true, permanent family. Even if they had someone providing for them, they didn’t have what other kids have: parents. Having someone to call their parents, someone to love them and someone who really cared about their future is what could truly impact a child. Research has shown that adults that grew up in foster care and never had a permanent family are more likely to experience homelessness or unemployment, which just goes to show that children and teenagers