Family Foster Care in the Next Century

Abstract

Although family foster care, designed to provide temporary protection and nurturing for children experiencing maltreatment, has been a critical service for millions of children in the United States, the increased attention given to this service in the last two decades has focused more on its limited ability to achieve its intended outcomes than on its successes. This has resulted in a questioning and devaluing of family foster care as well as predictions of drastic reductions in its use. The reality, however, has been quite different. Though the use of the service has shifted, reflecting social and political events, family foster care remains an important child welfare service. Reaffirming its commitment to family foster care, the Child Welfare League of America's National Advisory Committee on Family Foster Care recommended that a special issue of Child Welfare be published on the subject. Aware that recent history has shown out-of-home care reacting to rather than anticipating change, the Committee decided to focus the special issue on family foster care in the next century. This issue would thus provide the opportunity for the field's best practitioners, researchers, and managers to share their knowledge as well as their expectations, concerns, and hopes for family foster care. Acting on the Committee's recommendation, a call for abstracts was issued in the fall of 1997, with overwhelming results: three times the number of abstracts usually submitted for a special issue were received. Both the range of content addressed and the quality of the abstracts received were impressive, making selection of the 11 articles included in this issue difficult. The need to consider balance and coverage of specific topics necessitated the exclusion of many fine papers. Immediately after CWLA issued the call for abstracts, Congress enacted major federal legislation impacting family foster care-the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (P.L.105-89)reminding us of the importance of legislation as it reflects social trends and political thinking and shapes practice. A review of that act, as well as other major child welfare legislation, provides an important contextual element for this volume. In 1980, in response to the drifting of children in care, Congress passed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (P.L. 96-272), a key factor in shaping the current status of family foster care. The legislation responded to concerns that placement in out-of-home care was being used when other services were more appropriate, that children were remaining in care for excessive periods of time, and that children were simply being forgotten once they entered out-of-home care. The goal of the act was to reduce reliance on out-of-home care and encourage the use of preventive and reunification services; it also mandated that agencies engage in permanency planning efforts. By 1984, P.L. 96-272 was showing some success in reducing the number of children in care and the length of time spent in care. From the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, however, a dramatic 74% increase in the number of children in out-of-home care occurred [Petit & Curtis 1997]; the length of time children remained in care and their rate of reentry into care also rose. Concurrently, the out-of-home care system found itself facing new challenges: the overrepresentation of children of color; an influx of infants and preschoolers; children with increasingly severe emotional/ behavioral problems; the pervasiveness of substance abuse and its impact on families; the growing number of children infected/ affected by HIV/AIDS; and the discharge of many youths from care who lacked jobs, homes, and connections to a family.* Once again, the out-of-home care system found itself straining to deal with the sheer number of children in the system and with the complex issues that had brought them there. Concern grew that many children were coming into care needlessly and that many more could go home or achieve permanency with another family if more family-centered, intensive services were available. …