Foster care in the United States
[10] The Children's Aid Society created "a foster care approach that became the basis for the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997" called Concurrent Planning.
[9] "From the mid-1800s to the eve of the Great Depression, orphan train children were placed with families who pre-selected them with an order form, specifying age, gender, hair and eye color.
Social workers exercise discretion in assessing the unique circumstances of each case and determining appropriate interventions considering factors such as family dynamics, risk levels, and available support services.
Effective collaboration among social workers, attorneys, judges, service providers, and parents is essential for achieving positive outcomes for the children involved.
[26] After a class action lawsuit was filed in 1984, a federal court ruled that Maryland had not been ensuring the constitutional rights of its foster children.
[27] The decree remained in place in 2003 when state employee Michelle Lane discovered and made known continued issues with social worker assignments under the program.
As of September 2018, Maryland's foster care program remained under court supervision, with an exit requiring full compliance with the consent decree for three six-month reporting periods in a row.
Proponents of ASFA claimed that before the law was passed, the lack of such legislation was the reason it was common for children to languish in care for years with no permanent living situation identified.
The legislation also strengthens requirements for states in their treatment of siblings and introduces mechanisms to provide financial incentives for guardianship and adoption.
05-16071[37] that a CPS social worker who removed children from their natural parents into foster care without obtaining judicial authorization, was acting without due process and without exigency (emergency conditions), and therefore violated the 14th Amendment and Title 42 United States Code Section 1983.
[41] In 2007 Deanna Fogarty-Hardwick obtained a jury verdict against Orange County (California) and two of its social workers for violating her Fourteenth Amendment rights to familial association by unlawfully placing her kids in foster care.
[42] The case finally ended in 2011 when the United States Supreme Court denied Orange County's request to overturn the verdict.
[43] A law passed by Congress in 1961 allowed AFDC (welfare) payments to pay for foster care which was previously made only to children in their own homes.
The factsheet opens with "Many foster care and adoption agencies, both public and private, welcome the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ+) community as valuable resources for infants, children, and youth in need of permanent families.
The incorporation of inclusive language, such as "married couples" or "spouses," allows for more accessibility to queer families and ultimately assists with the goal of finding safe housing for children in need.
[45] There is concern about racial biases based on the decision to use foster care as black and Indigenous children are overrepresented due to assumed differential treatment or discrimination.
[49] Poverty, substance abuse, domestic violence, and parental incarceration are all major factors that affect the entry of children into foster care and are all found in higher frequencies within these racial demographics.
[51][45] Professor Daniel Hatcher of the University of Baltimore, author of "The Poverty Industry: The Exploitation of America's Most Vulnerable Citizens" has testified before Congress, the Maryland General Assembly, and in other governmental proceedings regarding several issues affecting children and low-income individuals and families.
Professor Vivek Sankaran, University of Michigan, is author of "Rethinking Foster Care: Why Our Current Approach to Child Welfare Has Failed"[53] and "A Cure Worse Than the Disease?
His work focuses on improving outcomes for children in foster care by empowering their parents and strengthening decision-making processes in juvenile courts.
[54] Black children and their families are disproportionately targeted by child welfare investigations and removals from their households, with the vast majority of interventions being related to allegations of poverty-related neglect.
Spending would instead go to initiatives more conducive to child and family social wellbeing, such as cash assistance payments, healthcare and housing funding, and other forms of aid directly provided to children’s caregiving networks.
Martin Guggenheim argues that "providing children with strong legal representation furthers the state's interests in ways that are not advanced when parents are presented equally well.
In the welfare case, In re Jennifer G. (1984),[56] an appellate court issued an opinion leading to the removal of an attorney for his courtroom language used to advocate for reunification.
"[55] In 2010, an ex-foster child was awarded $30 million by jury trial in California (Santa Clara County) for sexual abuse damages that happened to him in his foster home from 1995 to 1999; he was represented by Stephen John Estey.
[57][58][59] The foster parent, John Jackson, was licensed by the state, despite the fact that he abused his own wife and son, overdosed on drugs and was arrested for drunken driving.
[57] In 2009, Oregon Department of Human Services agreed to pay $2 million into a fund for the future care of twins who were allegedly abused by their foster parents; this was the largest such settlement in the agency's history.
[60] According to the civil rights suit filed on request of the twins' adoptive mother in December 2007 in U.S. Federal Court, the children were kept in makeshift cages—cribs covered with chicken wire secured by duct tape—in a darkened bedroom known as "the dungeon."
The boy, who had a shunt put into his head at birth to drain fluid, did not receive medical attention, so when police rescued the twins he was nearly comatose.
[60] Several lawsuits were brought in 2008 against the Florida Department of Children & Families (DCF), accusing it of mishandling reports that Thomas Ferrara, 79, a foster parent, was molesting young girls.
