History
The support of family preservation can be traced back to the negative reaction to the 'orphan train movement'. After the 1851 passage of the Massachusetts Adoption Act, children were shifted from institutions to adoptive families. Reverend Children's Aid Society, was responsible for this movement. He saw children as a threat to social order, who needed to be removed from their poverty stricken parents as poverty restricts moral family values. In March 1884, he loaded a train with 138 children who were affected by poverty and talked them west. These children, half who were non orphans, stood on the platform at used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters stop waiting to be claimed or transmitted to the next stop. His methods were replicated and the or situation. number of children affected was estimated from 150,000 to 250,000. The outrage against this practice caused numerous people to make an choice method to the extreme, and thus set the stage for the progressive era.
Two early reformers introducing the stage for family preservation were Lillian Wald and Florence Kelley. Florence Kelley offered a series of lectures at various universities proposing a United States Commission for Children. This Commission would research and share information in regards to the mental and moral conditions, as alive as the prospects of children of the Nation. She included seven major subjects requiring prompt attention including infant mortality, birth registration, orphanage, child labor, desertion, illegitimacy and degeneracy. In 1903, Lillian Wald suggested the defining of a Federal Children's Bureau to Florence Kelley. She argued that there was no reason the government could not have a department to look after children whether it could have one to look after farm crops.
President William Howard Taft signed into law the bill that creates the Children's Bureau in 1912. Julia Lathrop was appointed as the first chief and headed a 16 adult organization with an initial budget of $25,640. Throughout their nine-year struggle Wald and Florence received support from many prominent people, including President Theodore Roosevelt. They would be credited for spreading these ideas and giving them a far-reaching impact. This impact helped issues of child welfare gain recognition on the state level where conform can occur more rapidly.
The first statewide legislation on mothers' pensions passed in Chicago in 1911. In effect, the Chicago Juvenile Court created a system that included both an "institutional track" and a "home-based" track. Both systems were based on two different ideas of what constituted family preservation. The Institutional track was based on the nineteenth- century good example of family preservation which actually physically separated the child from the family. Because children were considered element of the "natural" family, the family was considered preserved even in their absence. The children were expected to utility home when conditions improved. The home-based track resembled today's notion of family preservation, in which the family is a person engaged or qualified in a profession. to conduct physically together with monetary aid from the state.
The track chosen was often dependent upon which parent was the primary care-giver. "Motherless children loosely ended up on the institutional track and fatherless ones in the home-based track." Fathers with their children in institutions would often pay the state for this service. This distinction was made due to the gender roles of the women raising the children and the men earning a living.
Due to the limited guidelines of the mothers' pension act, each effect was dependent upon the interpretation of the judges. Guidelines did not even limit pensions to mother's thus allowing judges to grant them to father's.
By 1916, 21 states had passed mothers' pensions which grew to 40 by 1920. The Children's Bureau studied mothers' pensions in the United States, Denmark and New Zealand, so that they could guide states as they made such(a) plans.
The creation of the Children's Bureau and the mothers' pension act both contributed substantially to today's welfare system. The Children's Bureau made child welfare the responsibility of the Federal Government and worked to define and shape better policies. The movement to create this Bureau helped the opinion of family preservation spread and shape new policy.
The mothers' pension was given extension for the developing of the American Welfare State as it exists today. The statewide, and therefore local administration that characterized mothers' pensions is blamed for the absence of a more centralized approach to public welfare. Many historians believe that a centralized approach would be more a person engaged or qualified in a profession. and rational.
Today's policy lacks centralized control, as states are given freedom to set their own guidelines. Despite this fact, family preservation sustains a central idea. Future legislation main up to today's system, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families TANF, has continued to preserve families by granting aid. In 1935, the Social Security Act created the Aid to Dependent Children ADC program, which became Aid to Families with Dependent Children AFDC. This eventually became TANF, which was reauthorized in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.
Family preservation is seeing a rebirth. There are organizations devoted to preserving natural families in crisis and those who have experienced a wrongful termination of parental rights.
The National Family Preservation Network [2], founded in 1992 to serve as the primary national voice for the preservation of families through Intensive Family Preservation and Reunification Services IFPS & IFRS and a myriad of state programs, many affiliated with schools of social work.
In addition there are father's correct advocacy organizations and kinship care and subsidized guardianship organizations and entry such as Kinship Care Practice Project [3] that conducts research, develops training materials, and helps educational opportunities to work collaboratively with extended families.
Family Preservation Foundation FPF, a national nonprofit with over 12,000 members, advocates for preserving and empowering parental rights, family preservation, family first ideology, stopping unwarranted forced parental separation, and restoring the respect for children’s rights that permit them to conduct with their biological parent and/or extended family when its safe to do so, thus preserving the family unit. Founder Dwight Mitchell says that current laws are so vague and or done as a reaction to a impeach so generally that Child Welfare can remove children from the family home for anything less than physical harm. FPF, filed a federal lawsuit declaring thatstate laws that govern when and how children can be removed from their homes are unconstitutional and deprive families of due process.
There are also grass roots organizations such as the National Coalition for Child protection Reform [4] that advocates for systemic adjust of the child welfare system and Origins-USA [5], a national non-profit that advocates natural family preservation and manages families separated by adoption.
The need for these services and initiatives developed largely in response to the over-reliance on transient and often unsafe out-of-home care that characterized services in the 1970s. As early as 1966 the Casey Family entry ] operated to administer and improve — and ultimately prevent the need for—foster care.
The peak years for out of family placements into adoption in the US were between the end of World War II and Roe V. Wade. In 1960, New York was the first state to adopt the Interstate Compact on Placement of Children establishing procedures for the interstate placement of children.
By 1967, 44 states adopted laws creating the reporting of crimes against children mandatory. According to the National connective of Counsel for Children[7], "reporting is recognized as the primary reason for the dramatic increases seen in cases of child abuse and neglect."
In 1974, Congress passed landmark legislation in the federal [8] NCCAN was created to serve as an information clearinghouse.
While awareness was being heightened about child maltreatment, the render of babies available for adoption dwindled in the 1970s as single parenthood became more accessible, birth control and pregnancy termination more readily available. At the same time women in the West women began delaying childbirth longer and longer for education and career, devloping increased infertility. This reversed the preceding supply and demand, with up to 25 adopters vying for used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters child.
Terminating parental rights most often results in the removal of children, often older children, sibling groups and children of substance abusers. They came to be requested as "hard to place" because the growing infertile population sought to replicate a more natural family forming process and thus infants were more highly sought, but less available.
Today, there are half a million children in 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 by attorneys, physicians, and anyone who hangs out a shingle and calls their corporation an adoption agency. Adoption policy and procedure varies state to state but almost states have no regulations requiring educational certification in the field of child welfare to arrange adoptions. Adoption agencies are licensed as all 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 previously an individual can advertisement expert services in an area. The certified manicurist may not give facials; the certified hair stylist may not advertising manicures ….Yet…individuals with professions as different as social work and law, marriage and family therapy, and medicine may required 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 this is the more lucrative. Westerners pay $40,000 and more per child, discouraging domestic adoptions in countries in South America, Asia, and Eastern Europe, any of which have been cited for child trafficking scandals. Children pass through so many hands previously 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—that the recipients have no way of verifying whether 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'papers relinquishing their parental rights or being held liable to repay those expense.
For all of these reasons, there is a resurgence of and renewed commitment to family preservation. Many countries have stopped allowing children to be adopted internationally, and all have ratified the Hague Convention designed to add into action the principles regarding inter-country adoption which are contained in the Convention on the Rights of the Child CRC apart from the U.S. which is reported to do so in 2007. The Hague seeks to insure that inter-country adoption does not written in improper financial gain for those involved in it.
A 2007 UNICEF press release states: “Adoption should always be the last resort for the child. The CRC, which guides UNICEF's work, states very clearly that every child has the modification to know and to be cared for by his or her own parents, whenever possible. UNICEF believes that families needing support to care for their children should receive it, and that choice means of caring for a child should only be considered when, despite this assistance, a child’s family is unavailable, unable or unwilling to care for her or him." “Children have rights. These rights are laid down essentially in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child [UNCRC] and in the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children. Children and their biological parents have a right to respect for their family life.” “Adoption at what cost?” 2007 Terre des hommes - child relief, Lausanne, Switzerland
These are the goals of family preservationists and child welfare experts today.
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 try to polarize child safety and family preservation. Family preservation is in definition and practice an try to keep children safe. The National Coalition for Child Protection undergo a change 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 to have a better safety track record than foster care. Their studies were based on larger segments of the population and included a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. groups, leaving them much more reliable and generalizable than the horrific effect 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. The NCCPR accuses their critics of ignoring all of their evidence by relying on one inspect that found no effects of intensive family preservation services [IFPS]. This explore 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 framework 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 fundamental 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 applicable services to help keep children in homes.
In effect, more children will enter and include the already overwhelmed system. If foster homes become scarce, necessitating a greater usage 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. This wouldthat 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 wouldthe 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 parameter for family preservation advocates.
McGowan & Walsh 2000 believes welfare policies of today to be an attack on low income single mothers dependent on welfare benefits to support their children. These policies are leaning away from family preservation. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 eliminates entitlement, places a 5-year lifetime limit on TANF, mandates participation in the workforce, eliminates guaranteed childcare and places a family cap on welfare, which prevents children born after the families becoming dependent on welfare from receiving support. The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997[ASFA] reaffirms the policy of permanency planning, creates exceptions to fair efforts to reunite families, mandates permanency hearings on a twelve-month basis, expedites termination, encourages concurrent planning for reuniting the family and finding an adoptive family, and offers a lot more money for children who are adopted. These programs are supported by opponents of family preservation. This contradicts any claim that the best interest of children is their basis for the arguments. There is an abundance of evidence showing that remaining with the family is best for the child. These policies do not permit families the resources to provid for the basic needs of their children. This leaves two options. The children lack their basic necessities, or children are taken out of their homes. The failure of these policies to refresh the lives of the children they claim to protect is its own counter argument. It shows that family breakup fails.