Children Welfare
Abstract
The child welfare system in a given society aims to promote the well-being of children by ensuring their safety, achieving permanency, and promoting stronger families in which the children are raised. The first interactions with child welfare systems in most families happens when there are cases of child maltreatment. The federal law defines child maltreatment as serious harm caused to children by parents or caregivers. The harm to children may occur in the form of neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, or emotional abuse (McDonell & Skosireva, 2009). Such Maltreatment can also arise when the parents or caregivers allows it to happen or does nothing to prevent it from occurring to the child. In most cases, child welfare is not a single unit, rather a system that comprises organizations that include community establishments, law enforcement agencies, public social services, foster care, and health systems, among others. Child welfare is complex, and their specific procedures may vary within different jurisdictions.
Introduction
Each year, approximately six million cases of child abuse and neglect are reported while the majority go unreported (Hamilton, 2017). As such, the vice poses long-term challenges in the human and fiscal environment since they affect not only the victims but also their families. Future relationships and society at large. As such, child welfare programs should not only reach out to the victims but should also come up with holistic strategies that are far-reaching as opposed to the traditional fragmented success of the programs. As such, the program will be aimed at solving the welfare issues faced by the children while incorporating societal factors that affect families, thereby affecting the targeted children. In Florida, child neglect abuse and neglect is still alive today and has seen over 22,000 children raised in foster care. These are just the lucky few; more cases need the child welfare systems services to improve permanency outcomes for the children who, at times, will be forced to leave their homes. As such, the program will be based in Florida and will primarily address services that limit the removal rates in families and build on facilitating adoption and reunification of children in need.
Literature Review
Child welfare systems provide four main services, which include child protection investigations, family-centered services, and support, foster care, and adoption (Tarren-Sweeney, 2019). As such, the programs operate in an environment that needs accessibly throughout without fail to receive child maltreatment reports every day, day, and night. They are also faced with diverse populations, which include family histories, needs resources, cultures, and expectations (McCroskey and Meezan, 1998). Children found to have been abused or neglected may remain in their homes, but those perceived to be in danger as per the child welfare assessment are placed in out-of-home care. Initially, such care in temporary and gives the parents/guardians a chance to change their behavior, seek social support, and ensure the living environment is safe for the child to enable them to reunify them with their children. The situation if Florida is not unique, as similar child welfare issues characterize it, thus reinstating the program’s problems and the need for increased child protection services.
To some degree, the cultural, religious, and political affiliations in a society affect children’s welfare and how the issues are handled. Typically, parents are in charge of molding the behavior and thinking of their kids and may decide how they parent their kids in the future (Cowperthwaite, 2010). This contributes to the conviction of parents in taking good care of their children, which at times is also contributed by religious beliefs. For example, in a Muslim background where girls are expected to remain virgins till marriage, they might be evicted from their families when they are involved in teenage sex, which is part of the new norm of the 21st Century. To an extension, social ills that make kids vulnerable can be accelerated by the political situation of a country. For example, in the United States, being a capitalist state, the system widens the gap between the rich and the poor, thereby leaving children from low-income families exposed.
Children welfare issues pose a great social and economic costs to the communities that do not invest resources to take care of vulnerable children. As such, child welfare programs should include abuse prevention, services like health and education, and other long term programs like housing. In the absence of these programs, the society is exposed to future social issues which include drug use and alcohol misuse, mental illnesses, juvenile offending, criminality, among others. Cost associated includes incarceration costs for the offenders, medical costs due to poor health, lowered productivity from lack of education, and the dependency on government services for upkeep when people cannot fend for themselves. As such, there is a substantial direct cost associated with child neglect. Additionally, other than the identifiable social and economic costs, it is within children and human rights, for children to receive the kind of care offered by the welfare programs.
Background History on the Program
In Florida, child welfare programs were championed by the Children’s Home Society of Florida, which operates as a nonprofit organization and founded in 1922 by Rev. D.W. Comstock through the help of community leaders. As such, child welfare programs are not new in Florida; however, there is still a big gap in the society that needs to be fulfilled. CHS has largely been the face of child welfare promotion in the state. It has structured its programs to include investigating alleged child abuse, foster care, adoption services, early education, and support services that ensure that families remain habitable and nurture children in a safe environment. Besides, CHS has played a big role in pushing and passing of children’s rights and welfare legislation in the United States, which has since been adopted as part of the federal laws for the country. Florida children’s council has undertaken much of the policy needs in the children’s welfare system. Besides, they also work with individual children services councils, advocacy organizations, and the Florida executive and legislative branches to ensure the effectiveness of the policies and yield positive results for communities and that state, regarding children welfare issues (“Priority Issues – Florida Children’s Council,” 2020).
In recent years, there has been a surge in the number of children brought into Florida’s child welfare system but has not been compensated by the amount of resources needed to offer the services required by the children. The situation has been made worse by the need for swift removal of the kids from potentially dangerous situations, which results in the children joining an already stretched system. Additionally, there has been a great shortfall in the workforce needed to handle the ever-increasing caseloads (“Challenges Facing Florida’s Community-Based Child Welfare System,” 2020). As such, the demand continuously grows, which will stretch the system’s resources and increase the tax payers’ burden when public funds fund such programs due to the deteriorating situation that the children will find their forever homes. As such, the program will come handy in relieving the overstretched system and ensure the outcomes are met more swiftly.
To fit the needs in the existing situations, the child welfare program will receive and investigate cases of child abuse and neglect, provide services to needy families that require assistance in the protection and care of their children, facilitate for foster care when they are perceived to be unsafe at home and arrange for permanent adoptive homes and independent living services for children leaving foster care. As such, the program will have contributed to the core services of children’s welfare services.
References
Priority Issues – Florida Children’s Council. (2020). Retrieved 1 June 2020, from http://flchildrenscouncil.org/legislative-affairs/priority-issues/
McDonell, J., & Skosireva, A. (2009). Neighborhood Characteristics, Child Maltreatment, and Child Injuries. Child Indicators Research, 2(2), 133-153. doi: 10.1007/s12187-009-9038-6
Hamilton, M. (2017). The barriers to a national inquiry into child sexual abuse in the United States. Child Abuse & Neglect, 74, 107-110. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2017.10.004
Tarren-Sweeney, M. (2019). Introduction to Developmental Child Welfare: A new interdisciplinary journal connecting developmental science and child welfare. Developmental Child Welfare, 1(1), 3-4. doi: 10.1177/2516103219827434
McCroskey, J., and W. Meezan. 1998. Family-centered services: Approaches and effectiveness. The Future of Children 8(1):54-71.
Cowperthwaite, P. (2010). Culture Matters: How Our Culture Affects the Audit*. Accounting Perspectives, 9(3), 175-215. doi: 10.1111/j.1911-3838.2010.00010.x
Challenges Facing Florida’s Community-Based Child Welfare System. (2020). Retrieved 1 June 2020, from http://www.flchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TaxWatch.pdf