Combining group and foster care: Solution or problem?: A response to Arieli and Feuerstein

Abstract

The relationships among foster and group care and biological families have, deservedly, occupied the attention of child welfare advocates for at least a decade. Among the major reasons for this attention, at least in North America, is the concern that some children have in the past been inappropriately placed and that the placement setting--foster care or group care--has often been purposely isolated by practice, attitude, and administrative prescription from the child's family of origin. The concern with "permanency" has caused a re-examination of placement policies, a greater emphasis on preventive services, and a range of practice innovations designed to increase the involvement of parents in the care and treatment of their children away from home (Jenson & Whittaker, in press; Whittaker, in press). Outcome research from group care has reinforced the notion of parent involvement as a frequent correlate of successful community readaptation of youth (Whittaker & Pecora, 1984). The present contribution by Arieli and Feuerstein provides a useful point of cross-cultural reference for how the issue of permanency is being addressed in at least one rural Israeli community. While the vignettes from individual youth were illuminating and useful, I found the overall paper disappointing in several respects. First, the authors begin with a presumptive list of problems specific to foster and residential care and then go on to detail a "solution" (combined care) to address these problems. Unfortunately, neither the problem nor the solution are buttressed with confirming data. Are we to assume, for example, that "exposure," "over control," "insufficient relationships," and "distance" are nezessarily found in all group care settings? If so, to what degree and how measured? Similarly, no clear rationale (or evidence) is offered to explain why some of these "problems" might not also affect the foster home or, conversely, why the presumed foster care problems might not also affect the group care setting. If this were, in fact, the case, it would stand the authors' "solution" on its head: i.e., by combining two substitute care settings, one would actually be exacerbating the child's sense of impermanence. In the absence of any objective data on the children's adjustment, we have no way of knowing. Curiously, however, the authors' recounting of the apparently numerous and frequent incidence of incontinence among the youth