Care Of Dependent Children Research Articles

Caring for dependent children impacts practical and emotional problems and need for support, but not perceived distress among cancer patients.

More than one in 10 cancer patients care for dependent children. It is unclear whether this status makes a difference in terms of the distress and associated problems they experience, or whether it is linked to differences in the need for or utilization of psychosocial support. Secondary analysis of a cross-sectional German study in National Comprehensive Cancer Centers using self-report standardized questionnaires administered to inpatients. Patients living with dependent children (n=161) were matched by age and sex with a subsample of 161 cancer patients not living with dependent children. The resulting sample was tested for between-group differences in Distress Thermometer (DT) scores and the corresponding DT Problem List. Additionally, between-group differences in measures of the need for and utilization of psychosocial support were examined. More than 50% of all patients suffered from clinically relevant distress. Patients living with dependent children reported significantly more practical (p<0.001, η2 p=0.04), family (p<0.001, η2 p=0.03), and emotional problems (p<0.001, η2 p=0.01). Although reporting a greater need for psychological support, parents with cancer were not found to more frequently utilize any type of psychosocial support. The specific problems and needs of parents with cancer who care for dependent children are currently not sufficiently addressed in the clinical care pathways. All families should be helped to establish open and honest communication as well as understand the available support systems and what they can provide. Tailored interventions should be implemented for highly distressed families.

The Farm, Foster Care, and Dependent Children in the Midwest, 1880–1920

Between the Civil War and World War I, the midwestern farm played an important role in the care of dependent children. Instead of paying families to take in children, welfare workers relied on farmers to take children in for free. However, the situation for dependent children and farmers changed during the Progressive Era. Movements to improve farming methods and standards of living in the hopes of keeping rural people on the land highlighted the difficulties of farm life. For the children placed in free homes with farmers, reformers sought to improve record keeping and supervision. Such reforms had unforeseen consequences. The bureaucracy needed to supervise children placed on farms increased costs, while farmers resented the intrusion. Children who labored for free on farms no longer learned skills useful in the modern, industrializing nation. As more systematic supervision became standard across the Midwest, farm placement lost its appeal. By examining the motivations for better supervision of placed-out children and how those plans became policy, this article reveals complexities, underestimated by previous scholars, in the commonly told story of the transition of child-welfare practices from an emphasis on free farm placement to paid foster care in suburban and urban settings.

Care-givers, leisure and meanings of home: a case study of low income women in Dublin

This article seeks to contribute to the literature on the meanings of domestic spaces by furthering understandings of the sorts of roles that space plays in shaping women's leisure experiences. The study researched a group of 15 women who live in disadvantaged areas of Dublin city and care for dependent children. Focus groups and structured conversations revealed the poverty of the spatial capital available to these women, depicting local environments as difficult and stressful, and to be endured rather than enjoyed. They further revealed the extent to which the women's lives were shaped by their obligations as care-givers. Within the home itself, private domestic spaces were found to be deeply embedded with powerful ideologies of motherhood that did not necessarily evaporate in the simple absence of obligations imposed by children. Instead, they tended to serve as constant reminders of how things ‘should be’, consequently constraining some women's abilities to divest themselves of care-giving duties and engage in self-focused recreation. Some of the women studied were able to move beyond obligation, and for them leisure represented modest yet significant opportunities to self-determinedly relax, reclaim and even luxuriate in certain spaces within their homes. Similarly, once relieved of child-caring responsibilities, leisure encounters within the local environment afforded some women new insights into familiar spaces.

Poverty and Child Welfare, 101 Years Later

It has been 101 years since the first White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children. Advocates were admonished to refrain from disrupting families simply because the families were poor. This basic instruction has proved difficult to implement. Public child welfare has become a system that primarily serves poor children and their families (Pelton, 1994). How well these families are served is open to debate. POVERTY AND CHILD WELFARE A review of families served by child welfare reveals that many of the families are poor. Most of the referrals to Child Protective Services allege neglect, which is strongly associated with poverty (Sedlak & Broadhurst, 1996; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2008). The overrepresentation of African Americans in the child welfare system suggests that race may serve to exacerbate the role of socioeconomic status (Harris & Hackett, 2008). Poverty is a threat to the well-being of children (Maluccio, Pine, & Tracy, 2002). However, policies and services to ameliorate poverty are much harder to find. The disadvantages of poverty are cumulative. Poor families come to the attention of child welfare for poverty-related issues. Children can be hungry, be living in substandard housing or be homeless, be unsupervised while a parent works or is meeting other responsibilities, be truant from failing schools, lack medical care, or have a caretaker with untreated mental illness or substance abuse. Each of these issues can be a pathway to placement. Locating accessible and effective community services for these issues can be a daunting task for child welfare staff. Compounding the challenges are pressing workforce issues. High turnover rates among child welfare staff are costly for agencies struggling to recruit, train, and retain staff and are expensive for families as service plans are delayed, not evaluated, or not even implemented (Graef & Hill, 2000). Housing and residing in low-income neighborhoods are especially troubling areas for families involved in the child welfare system. Housing problems can result in both the disruption of families and the inability to restore children to their families (Pelton, 2008). A condition for reunification often involves requiring the parent to secure safe and stable housing. This can be a substantial barrier for poor parents. There is a clear association of housing problems with child welfare involvement (Courtney, McMurtry, & Zinn, 2004; Freisther, Merritt, & LaScalla, 2006). The link between neighborhood characteristics and reported child maltreatment rates suggests that economically distressed areas have higher maltreatment rates, although the mechanisms by which this happens remain to be explored (Coulton, Crampton, Irwin, Spilsbury, & Korbin, 2007). CHILD WELFARE SERVICES FOR POOR FAMILIES There is little disagreement about the association of poverty with child welfare involvement. Disagreements develop when casual relationships are advanced. For example, does living in poverty increase the risks of other adverse events such as stress, substance abuse, mental illness, and domestic violence? These factors are also associated with higher rates of child welfare involvement. Research continues to advance the understanding of the etiology of child maltreatment. However, child welfare agencies cannot wait for the definitive explication of the micro, macro, and mezzo complexities of maltreatment. Thus, service plans are often based on the best available data. When parents have substance abuse issues, the service plan is likely to require parenting classes and substance abuse treatment. If there is conflict in the family, then counseling is likely to be required. Poor parents may be ordered to get job training or to find a job. These typical service plans represent a step in an attempt to benefit the family. Unfortunately, they can ignore the pressing realities of poverty and inadequate services that are a part of the experience of families. …

Addressing parenting concerns of bone marrow transplant patients: opening (and closing) Pandora's box

Although a significant number of adults undergoing stem cell transplant (SCT) or bone marrow transplantation (BMT) care for dependent children, and these treatments pose significant challenges for families, research has virtually ignored the impact of parenting on patients' quality of life during BMT/SCT and children's responses to having a parent undergo these treatments. Physicians rarely inquire about parenting concerns related to the extended hospitalizations necessitated by these treatments, yet clinical experience suggests that addressing patient concerns about children's reactions to cancer and BMT/SCT can improve the experience of the patient and the patient's family, and help the medical team respond effectively to sources of patients' distress. Parents frequently want to know what reactions to expect from children, thus general developmental information is reviewed, and recommendations given for when professional help for children is warranted. A key way for parents to support their children is with open, honest communication; however, parents often find it extremely difficult to talk about cancer and BMT/SCT with their children. The medical team can assist patients' efforts to communicate with and support their children by asking about a patient's children, providing some targeted information, and discussing the potential impact of treatments on parenting capacity. Inquiring about and addressing parenting concerns may initially seem difficult, but can ultimately facilitate stronger doctor-patient alliances, and more compassionate care.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Flexibility: families, self and work

Welcome to this special thematic issue of the Journal of Sociology, which brings together a cross-national series of contributions to the topic `Flexibility: Families, Self and Work'. The articles in this issue offer a variety of approaches to, and appreciation of, contemporary changes to the boundaries between and within families, paid and unpaid work, labour markets, gendered identities and social policy. The diversity and depth of articles in this issue provide meaningful insights into the nature of the changing relationships in these key social institutions. The articles presented here report research from a number of industrialized countries including Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The changing articulation between state policies and family character and forms is explored in a number of articles. From Northern Ireland, the implications of the European Economic Union's agricultural policies, in the context of global economic and technological changes in farming, are explored in terms of women's work on and off farms. This in turn is shown to have clear implications for the masculine identity of farmer husbands, for the gender relationships within farming households, for the mental health of farmers, and for the care of dependent children. Kelly and Shortall's research on farmers' wives who are off-farm breadwinners in Northern Ireland will no doubt resonate with the situation of farming families in many other countries, including Australia. The growth of sole parenthood has been a feature of the demographic change characterizing household and family forms for some decades now. Two contributions deal specifically with the position of sole mothers. Baker and Tippin's article draws on interviews with 120 sole mothers in transition from welfare to work schemes in New Zealand. The article provides important insights into the problems encountered by these women who confront labour markets that are increasingly fragmented, casualized, and offer part-time, low-status and indeed often rigid and constraining workplace practices and environments. The qualitative data presented in this article shed important light on the tensions experienced by these women in terms of maintaining their identity as mothers, indeed as sole parents, and having to comply with the demands of return-to-work policies. There are clear differences between women whose training and experience allow them access to higher status jobs, and those who can only access the least desirable employment options, particularly in their ability to control various aspects, like hours, of their work environment. For all the women interviewed, there was anxiety associated with the need to meet state workfare demands, manage their economic survival and conform to their images of what constitutes a `good mother'. Those best able to manage these conflicting demands were those able to retain flexibility in their work patterns. For many, however, `the tensions sounding the mothering, work and welfare requirements [could] not be reconciled satisfactorily'. The argument that single mother households' welfare depends primarily on mo[hers having paid work is now widely made by policy-makers intent on encouraging single mothers into the paid workforce and containing welfare payments. Waiter's article uses recently collected Australian survey data to compare the effect of paid work on household economic well-being with that of other factors, notably whether or not the mother is partnered. Putting paid to the simplistic idea that having a mother in paid work necessarily improves well-being, Walter shows that the more complete the measure of economic well-being, the less likely it is that a woman's paid employment will help well-being. Indeed, in an echo of one of Baker and Tippin's findings, it appears that, on the most sophisticated measure of well-being, household welfare is improved by mothers working only if they obtain professional/administrative jobs. …

Toward a Position Statement on the Congregate Care of Children

Political considerations that both led to a focus on personal responsibility and culminated in current welfare-to-work programs involved early discussions and punitive proposals for the care of welfare dependent children. Social work advocacy groups lobbied extensively and developed reactive positions in response to these proposals. Aprofessional position statement on the care of dependent children had not been developed, and a number of social workers began to discuss ideological views such as the care of dependent children in orphanages. The following perspective is exemplar of some of those communications.

Women in the Middle: A Myth in the Making?

In the past decade, a body of literature has evolved around the concept caregiving the (Brody, 1981, 1990). Women midlife who are primary caregivers for older relatives are defined as in the of stressful lifestyles that may include employment, housework, and care of dependent children (Brody, 1981, 1990; Horowitz, 1985; Noelker & Wallace, 1985; Soldo & Myllyluoma, 1983; Stueve & O'Donnell, 1989). Researchers, practitioners, and lay people acknowledge that caregiving is stressful (George, 1990; Zarit, 1989). Further, research continually shows that most primary caregivers to older people are women (e.g., Coward & Dwyer, 1990; Stone, Cafferata, & Sangl, 1987). The degree to which this situation is problematic for caregiving women may not be as grave as some have argued (Spitze & Logan, 1990). There are several reasons--demographic and methodological--for questioning the extent of the problem of women the middle. First, some research has concentrated on whether the situation of women the middle is normative the general population (Spitze & Logan, 1990). These authors argue that the situation defined as women (or men) the middle is not typical of middle-aged persons the United States. That is, the situation of women being the middle is not normative. Similar findings have been reported for middle-aged women Canada (Rosenthal, Matthews, & Marshall, 1989). These authors find, for example, that when women are caring for frail parents, they and their parents tend to be older. Therefore, only a small proportion of women who are providing care to older relatives also have dependent children. Second, several aspects of caregiving women's lifestyles have not been directly examined. For example, there is an assumption that caregiving for dependent parents or children is always stressful, even though comparisons of caregiving and noncaregiving populations are generally not made (George & Gwyther, 1986). Research shows that more caregiving demands (i.e., greater elder impairment, more caregiving tasks performed) are associated with greater caregiver burden or strain (see George, 1990). But how strained is strained? That is, demonstrating a positive, linear relationship between, say, elder impairment and caregiver strain does not indicate the degree to which people are strained, only that as elder impairment increases, caregiver strain also increases. Some researchers suggest that the competing demands of parent care, child care, and employment lead to greater levels of caregiver stress (Older Women's League, 1989; Stone, Cafferata, & Sangl, 1987). The point usually made is that a higher number of demanding situations is more stressful. Because certain proportion of women are caring for older relatives and have dependent children and/or are employed, it is thought that they must be experiencing greater stress because of these multiple or competing demands. The link between these multiple roles and stress is assumed, not demonstrated. Third, some researchers find that care of children exacerbates the stress for women the middle (Rosenthal, Matthews, & Marshall, 1989). Others show that caregivers whose household size is largest describe a pattern of increasing support over time (Clipp & George, 199O, p. S-106). Yet, the relationship between the presence or number of children within a household and caregiver stress or well-being has not been analyzed. The type of living arrangement (shared versus separate), however, has been found to be a important factor affecting caregiver strain (Soldo & Myllyluoma, 1983; Tennstedt & McKinlay, 1989). Adult children caregivers sharing the same residence with care recipients report greater strain or depression than those who live apart from the recipient. Often, the elders' greater impairment prompts the shared living arrangement. In other cases, the increased contact shared living arrangements may lead to increased strain Noelker & Wallace, 1985). …

Crisis of the American Orphanage, 1931-1940

Orphanage censuses increased for 25 years after the 1909 White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children. This increase is both well known and easily understood as a result of increasing numbers of children in foster care and limited placement opportunities. The present study is based on the records of 14 children's homes (N = 12,254), together constituting a 91 percent sample of all dependent and neglected children in institutional care in south central Pennsylvania from 1910-65. The main finding is that average length of stay in orphanage care also increased up to the mid-1930s. This increase was strikingly contrary to the consensus reached at the 1909 conference and symptomatic, the article argues, of a general crisis in orphanage care brought on by the Great Depression.

Trends in Residential and Community Care for Dependent Children and Youth in Israel:

Policy trends and their underlying ideologies are reviewed for Youth Aliyah, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, and the Ministry of Education and Culture. On this basis, the current status of research and evaluation, differential diagnosis and program assignment, and planning accountability are presented with recommendations for needed policy initiatives.

Institutional Care of Dependent Children from the Staff's Point of View

This article presents survey and interview data concerning the attitudes and practices of institution directors, head counselors, group leaders, school teachers and municipal and district social workers involved in child care placement in Israel. Both institution staff values and welfare agency policy often combine to defeat avowed professional goals concerning the care of institutionalized dependent children. The author suggests that these issues are not indigenous to Israel and recommends the introduction of incentives to curb turnover, wider use of para-professional staff, more subsidized social work positions in institutions, expansion of urban placement settings, a better definition of functions and placement goals, and a more rational utilization of professional manpower in child welfare work.

Aging and Psychological Adjustment

SCIENTIFIC and professional interest in older persons increased markedly since the previous (1955) review of this topic. The present review emphasizes a discussion of trends rather than details of specific studies. Emphasis was given the problems of aging by a Congressional Act (August 1958) calling for a White House Conference on Aging in January 1961. The President signed the bill which among its provisions calls for furthering research on aging. This act will no doubt give the field impetus and prestige like that given to the study of child development following the first White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children in 1909. The Council of State Governments also published its recommendations covering research and training as well as services for the aged (37). Centers for research on aging were established, and several child research institutes expanded their scope to include research on the later years. In some instances research on aging follows from longitudinal studies of development. Research on aging differs from that of early development for several reasons, among them that the daily life content of children and aging adults is so different. Conceivably adult adjustment, despite the difference in content, might involve the same psychological mechanisms as in childhood, but this is by no means clear. Anderson (4) described a developmental model for aging which includes the variables pertinent to adjustment. He emphasized (a) changes with time in the nature of the tasks facing the individual; (b) the necessity for the individual to organize a massive amount of experience of a lifetime; and (c) changes in the organism, particularly in speed and timing, which mediate the environmental task and the experience and habits of the individual.

Theodore Dreiser, the "Delineator" Magazine, and Dependent Children: A Background Note on the Calling of the 1909 White House Conference

On Christmas Day, 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt sent a letter to approximately one hundred persons in United States, calling them to meet at White House on January 25 and 26, 1909, to confer on the care of children who are destitute and neglected but not delinquent. Thus, as if he were capitalizing on sentiment of day, President Roosevelt put into effect an idea that has since exerted tremendous influence on development of child welfare programs in United States. Today, White House Conference is one of America's well-known institutions, It serves as a focal point for exchange and advancement of thinking among lay and professional people from all parts of country regarding welfare of children and youth. Its range of influence is worldwide. How did this significant development in social welfare field occur? What prompted President Roosevelt to issue call for 1909 White House Conference on Care of Dependent Children? This event was no historical accident. It was rather a product of times. The early 1900's may be called an age of reform,2 a period when federal re1 The research for this paper was done in 195556, when writer was on sabbatical leave studying in doctoral program at School of Social Work, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California. sponsibility for welfare emerged in United States. Theodore Roosevelt, in his own way, aided this development. But in field of child welfare it was not Theodore Roosevelt who led; he only facilitated. The lead was taken by a myriad of men and women from vantage points all over nation. Among them was Theodore Dreiser, a man whose contribution to child welfare in America has heretofore gone unnoticed. His work on behalf of dependent children while editor of Delineator magazine from 1907 to 1909 entitles him to be regarded, belatedly, as a person who in his time made a significant contribution to field. Certainly, with regard to forces that played upon scene at time of calling of 1909 White House Conference, Dreiser's activities during this period should be noted. This paper is about Dreiser's role in process leading up to calling of that conference. It also tells, in a way, part of story of contribution of American journalism to advancement of social welfare causes in United States.

Sociology and the Care of Dependent Children

Journal Article Sociology and the Care of Dependent Children Get access Joseph Bonapart Joseph Bonapart Los Angeles, California Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 12, Issue 4, May 1934, Pages 515–522, https://doi.org/10.2307/2569710 Published: 01 May 1934

REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF BOOKS

British Journal of InebrietyVolume 29, Issue 4 p. 169-204 REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF BOOKS First published: April 1932 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-0443.1932.tb04843.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract Book Review in This Article: The Social and Economic Aspects of the Drink Problem. My Life in Two Worlds. By Gladys Osborne Leonard. Contemporary Schools of Psychology. By Robert S. Wood-worth, Ph.D., ScD. The Use of the Self: Its Conscious Direction in Relation to Diagnosis, Functioning, and the Control of Reaction. By F. Matthias Alexander. Personality: Its Nature, its Operation, and its Development. By J. Louis Orton. The Human Side of Insurance. By F. J. Maclean. Guilty but Insane-A Broadmoor Autobiography. The Tramp: His Meaning and Being. By Frank Gray. Vitality. By Malcolm Spencer. The Happy Glutton: An Essay on Cooking considered both as a Fine Art and a Worldly Pleasure, accompanied by Recipes Selected or INVENTED BY THE Epicure. By Alin Laubreaux. Sociology. By Ernest R. Groves. Where Shall He Live? By Mary Higgs, M.A. London's Bad Boys. By S. V. Hatton. Young People's Bible Book. By Frederick J. Gould. Simple Beginnings in the Training of Mentally Defective Children. By Margaret MacDowall. The Young Englishman: A Study. By Francis Underhill, M.A. Home Guidance for Young Children: A Parents' Handbook. By Grace Langdon. The Dependent Child: A Story of Changing Aims and Methods in the Care of Dependent Children. Discovering Ourselves: A View of the Human Mind and How it Works. By Edward A. Strecker, A.M., M.D., and Kenneth E. Appel, Ph.D., M.D. An Introduction to Individual Psychology: A Practical Study of the Nature and Sources of Mental Energy. By Alice Raven. Rational Hypnotism. By J. Louis Orton. Vincent's Police Code and General Manual of the Criminal Law. Trial of Dr. Smethurst. Edited by Leonard A. Parry, M.D., B.S., F.R.C.S. William Stewart Halsted, Surgeon. By W. G. MacCallum The Scientific Detective and the Expert Witness. By L. Ainsworth Mitchell, D. Sc, F.I.C. Biology and Mankind. By S. A. McDowall, B.D. Taming the Criminal: Adventures in Penology. By John Lewis Gillin, Ph.D. The Marquis De Sade: With a Postscript on Restif de la Bretonne. By Otto Flake. Principles of Mental Health and Disease: A Contribution to the New Civilization. By Alice Raven. French Dishes for English Tables. By J. Berjane. Sex Instruction. By James J. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D. Psychology in General Nursing. By Isabel G. H. Wilson, M.D., D.P.M. The Meaning of Psychoanalysis. By Martin W. Peck, M.D. The Complete Works of Michael Fairless. Volume29, Issue4April 1932Pages 169-204 RelatedInformation

The Children's Bureau of Cleveland. A Study of the Care of Dependent Children in Cleveland, Ohio.

<i>The Children's Bureau of Cleveland. A Study of the Care of Dependent Children in Cleveland, Ohio</i>.

Book Review: Proceedings of the Conference on the Care of Dependent Children at Washington, D. C

Book Review: Proceedings of the Conference on the Care of Dependent Children at Washington, D. C

The Welfare of Children: A Reading List on the Care of Dependent Children. The Brooklyn, N. Y., Public Library

Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewsThe Welfare of Children: A Reading List on the Care of Dependent Children. The Brooklyn, N. Y., Public LibraryIrene WarrenIrene Warren Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 9, Number 1Sep., 1908 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/453786 Views: 2Total views on this site Journal History This article was published in The Elementary School Teacher (1902-1914), which is continued by The Elementary School Journal (1914-present). PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.