Child Welfare Institutions Research Articles

Social capital, spiritual capital, human capital, and financial capital in the management of child welfare institutions

Child Welfare Institutions (LKSA) are social organizations or associations that carry out social welfare which is formed by the community and is a legal entity based on national standards for childcare. This standard is part of an effort to encourage the transformation of the role of the orphanage and to position the institutions as alternatives in the childcare continuum for those who cannot be cared for in the main family, extended family, relatives, or substitute families. In line with this, the LKSA must function as a service center for children and their families. This is an effort to implement care and protection for children who are outside of family care and is a form of implementation of national legislation, both Law Number 4 of 1979 concerning Child Welfare and Law Number 23 of 2002 concerning Child Protection, which governed the importance of parenting by parents and families; but this has not been fully fulfilled at the level of implementation. Data collection in this study is qualitative data and quantitative data. Data sources used are primary data sources and secondary data sources. The data collection technique used are observation method, documentation method and a structured interview with purposive systematic sampling technique. The number of informants used were 8 people. While the data analysis technique is divided into three stages, namely, data collection, data reduction, and data presentation. Verification of the validity of the results of the analysis is using the source triangulation. Basically, humans have a fairly high sense of social level. Humans/employees cannot live alone especially in managing LKSAs. Employees need other people as co-workers. Work in a team.

Rethinking Child Welfare and Emigration Institutions, 1870–1914

This article challenges the entrenched image of child emigration as a failure in child welfare. By moving the analytical focus away from large, and at times corrupt, institutions, our analysis focuses on the emigration and rescue work undertaken by charities in Liverpool and Manchester. We argue that the image of the uncaring and emotionally distant institution does not reflect the ideology and practice of these societies. It shows we need to focus on the different institutional, religious and regional approaches to child emigration in order to understand fully ideas about institutional childhood and contemporary conceptions of child welfare.

A study on reading programs in child welfare institutions

A study on reading programs in child welfare institutions

A Study on Eco-Systemic Factors Effecting on Juvenile Offender’s Human Rights Consciousness in Child Welfare Institutions of Protective Disposition No.6

본 연구는 6호처분 위탁시설 청소년의 인권의식에 영향을 미치는 생태체계 요인을 알아보고자 하였다. 조사대상자는 9세 이상에서 24세 이하의 6호처분을 받아 아동보호치료시설에 생활하고 있는 청소년들이었다. 최종 분석한 사례 수는 218건이며 분석방법은 다중 회귀분석을 사용하였다. 연구 결과, 첫째, 6호처분으로 아동보호치료시설에서 생활하는 청소년의 인권의식은 보통 수준이었다. 둘째, 청소년의 인권의식에 영향을 미치는 생태체계 요인은 인권의식의 하위영역에 따라 부분적으로 차이가 있었다. 인권판단력과 인권감수성에 영향을 미치는 요인은 자아존중감이었다. 그러나 인권행동의사에서는 자아존중감, 차별당한 경험, 주양육자 양육태도, 학교폭력 피해경험, 시설의 의사소통이 유의미한 영향을 미쳤다. 이러한 결과는 6호처분으로 아동보호치료시설에서 생활하는 청소년의 인권의식에는 개인 및 가족 요인, 학교요인, 시설요인 등 생태체계 요인들이 부분적으로 영향을 미침을 확인한 것이다. 따라서 향후 비행청소년의 인권보호 및 인권의식 증진을 위한 정책 및 서비스에서는 청소년의 개인요인은 물론 가족, 학교, 시설환경을 고려한 통합적, 개별적, 다차원적 노력을 강구해야 하겠다.The purposes of this study are to examine eco-systemic factors effecting on juvenile offender’s human rights consciousness in protective disposition no.6 facilities. The study examined juvenile offender ranging from 9 to 24 years old residing in protective disposition no.6 facilities and analyzed 218 cases finally. The results are as follows: 1) Juvenile offender’s human rights consciousness are average and not lower seriously than of average adolescents. 2) Eco-systemic factors influencing juvenile offender’s human rights consciousness were different depending on subgroup of human rights. The author suggests the improvement in the degree of human rights consciousness of juvenile offender in protective disposition no.6 facilities by integrated youth policy and practice that take into account eco-systemic factors.

INTERRELATION OF SOCIAL TYPES OF ACTIVITY AND PERFORMANCE IN SPACE-PLANNING STRUCTURES OF URBAN AREAS (as exemplified in town of Irkutsk)

In the present paper the authors researched interrelation of nine major socially critical components of activity/performance of town population which form so-called activity frames in the structure of urban areas. The methodology of layering mapping, social activity/performance of population, received by use of software applications Dubl GIS Irkutsk 2016 and Google Earth, was applied. The research is based on author’s methodology of forming human activity/performance frames. Frames are presented essentially as formations consisting of nine socially critical components of human vital activity, namely: healthcare, education, culture, sport, child welfare institutions, leisure, commerce, beauty and wellness, residential housing. On the base of implemented research the authors have found interrelation of nine socially critical types of activity which characterized by parametric properties, such as consolidation, complexity, sparseness, ‘diffusiveness’ in space-planning urban environment. The received results allow to give more qualitative assessment in the process of design, construction and renovation of urban areas, districts, neighborhood units and clusters and also to keep track of dynamics of change in human activity in urban structures.

Risk analysis and prediction in welfare institutions using a recommender system

Recommender systems are recently developed computer-assisted tools that support social and informational needs of various communities and help users exploit huge amounts of data for making optimal decisions. In this study, we present a new recommender system for assessment and risk prediction in child welfare institutions in Israel. The system exploits a large diachronic repository of manually completed questionnaires on functioning of welfare institutions and proposes two different rule-based computational models. The system accepts users’ requests via a simple graphical interface, calculates the institutions’ profiles according to user preferences, and presents assessment scores, trends and comparative analyses of the corresponding data using assorted visual aids. Based on the analysis, the system offers three different strategies for objective assessment of the institutions’ functioning and risks. Qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the system’s effectiveness and accuracy demonstrates that it substantially improves the assessment process of a welfare institution. Moreover, it provides an effective tool for objective large-scale analysis of the institution’s overall state and trends, which were previously based primarily on the institution supervisors’ subjective judgment and intuition. In addition, the proposed recommender system has great practical and social impact as it may help identify and avert potential problems, malfunctions, flaws, risks and even tragic incidents in child welfare institutions, as well as increase their overall functioning levels. As a result, as a long-term social implication, the system may also help reduce inequality and social gaps in the Israeli society.

An Overview of Youth Substance Abuse Recovery Strategies in Norway

ABSTRACTThere are a number of available adolescent substance abuse treatment centers and services in Norway. The overall responsibility to help youth that need alcohol and/or drug treatment lies in the municipalities. Treatments take place either in institutions (e.g., child welfare institutions or inpatient settings) or at outpatient clinics (e.g., opioid maintained treatment, psychiatric youth team). If the adolescent needs detoxification services, they typically receive this in a hospital or residential treatment setting. This article will describe available opportunities and barriers for youth treatment and aftercare in Norway.

How much insecurity does security need? The discrepancy in assessing the sense of security of children, adolescents, and caregivers in institutions

ABSTRACTWhen developing concepts for protecting children and youth who live in institutions, the perspective of the addressees has so far been insufficiently taken into account. This study aims to compare the assessment of children, youth, and caregivers in institutions with regard to group atmosphere, participation, and sense of safety. A combined quantitative and qualitative approach compares the assessment of children or youth and caregivers in child and youth welfare institutions, boarding schools, and clinics through the use of an online questionnaire and group discussions that address the topics safety, group atmosphere, and participation. The quantitative questionnaire included 233 youth age 14 years and up and 490 caregivers; 87 children or youth between the ages of 11 and 18 years and 73 caregivers were part of the qualitative group discussion. The questionnaire showed that youth and caregivers assessed the sense of security in principle as positive. With regard to group atmosphere and participation, youth tended to see these aspects in a positive light, but almost all youth-aged participants viewed these specific categories more critically than did the adult caregivers. The results from the group discussions make clear that children, adolescents, and caregivers often underestimate the real dangers. The existing sense of security in institutions may be the result of underestimating real dangers. Implications for the implementation of protection concepts are drawn.

‘Self-Responsibility’ and the Politics of Chance: Theorizing the Experience of Japanese Child Welfare

ABSTRACTYouth who grow up in Japanese child welfare institutions (‘children’s homes’ or ‘orphanages’) are socially and structurally marginalized, and many have pasts characterized by neglect and abandonment. In a contemporary context in which young people in Japan are encouraged to think of themselves as agentive, ‘self-responsible’ subjects, I argue that Japan’s child welfare system disproportionately depends on chance in shaping positive or negative outcomes for state wards. Japan’s system of care and emancipation from the child welfare system is, I suggest, rooted in a non-empiricist view of experience: despite the fact that most of us depend on our past experiences to guide our expectations for the future, the child welfare system demands that youth leaving care break with a past of dependency and social marginalization to care for themselves with minimal or no state assistance. This article focuses on Tanpopo, a self-help group for people with putatively common experiences receiving care in a child welfare institution. I explore two Tanpopo members’ narratives in order to interrogate the assumptions about ‘experience’ that underlie Japan’s child welfare system itself, and the discursive representations of self-responsibility and agentive action in Japan today.

아동복지시설 심리장애 청소년의 YSR과 CBCL 6-18의 평가 일치도

아동복지시설 심리장애 청소년의 YSR과 CBCL 6-18의 평가 일치도

Les parcours de placement et la qualité de vie des enfants de 6 à 11 ans accueillis dans des institutions relevant de la protection de l’enfance

Besides diseases, the concept of quality of life is increasingly used to account for the consequences of other vulnerability situations that may be encountered by individuals, including young children. However, very few studies have examined children's perception of their quality of life in the context of child welfare and protection, and they yielded mixed results. The objectives of this study were (1) to compare the subjective quality of life of children placed in institution with that of children living in their families, by controlling for child sex, age, socioeconomic and familial status, and (2) to examine its relations with their placement course in the child welfare system. The sample of this study was composed of 56 children aged 6 to 11, 28 of which were placed in a child welfare institution. Information about the placement course of institutionalized children was given by their social workers and the quality of life of all participants was assessed with the AUQUEI questionnaire. This self-report, which is based on children's conception of their quality of life, allows assessment of four distinct dimensions in addition to the overall score: leisure, performances, relations and family life, and separation. According to the results, the quality of life of children placed in institutions did not differ from that of children living in their families. However, its perception was closely related to the placement course of institutionalized children in the child welfare system. Whereas maltreated children obtained lower overall and performance scores than their neglected peers, children placed in foster families before institution had a poorer perception of their quality of life in the domains of family life and separations. These results are interpreted in light of attachment research and theory. Indeed, the relations between children's quality of life and their placement course could be explained by their high level of attachment disorganization. Finally, the results of this study suggested that children were well aware of their difficulties and that they can easily be identified by directly assessing the children's quality of life.

Developmental logics: Brain science, child welfare, and the ethics of engagement in Japan

This article explores the unintended consequences of the ways scholars and activists take up the science of child development to critique the Japanese child welfare system. Since World War II, Japan has depended on a system of child welfare institutions (baby homes and children's homes) to care for state wards. Opponents of institutional care advocate instead for family foster care and adoption, and cite international research on the developmental harms of institutionalizing newborns and young children during the “critical period” of the first few years. The “critical period” is understood as the time during which the caregiving a child receives shapes neurological development and later capacity to build interpersonal relationships. These discourses appear to press compellingly for system reform, the proof resting on seemingly objective knowledge about child development. However, scientific evidence of harm is often mobilized in tandem with arguments that the welfare system is rooted in Japanese culture, suggesting durability and resistance to change. Further, reform efforts that use universalizing child science as “proof” of the need for change are prone to slip into deterministic language that pathologizes the experiences of people who grew up in the system. This article explores the reasons why deterministic models of child development, rather than more open-ended models like neuroplasticity, dominate activist rhetorics. It proposes a concept, “ethics of engagement,” to advocate for attention to multiple scales and domains through which interpersonal ties are experienced and embodied over time. Finally, it suggests the possibility of child welfare reform movements that take seriously the need for caring and transformative relationships throughout life, beyond the first “critical years,” that do not require deterministic logics of permanent delay or damage.

Variants of girls and boys with conduct disorder: anxiety symptoms and callous-unemotional traits.

Recent research suggests that among the group of aggressive and antisocial adolescents, there are distinct variants who exhibit different levels of anxiety symptoms and callous-unemotional traits (CU traits). The purpose of the present study was to examine whether such variants are also present in male and female adolescents diagnosed with conduct disorder (CD). We used model-based cluster analysis to disaggregate data of 158 adolescents with CD (109 boys, 49 girls; mean age =15.61years) living in child welfare and juvenile justice institutions. Three variants were identified: (1) CD only, (2) CD with moderate CU traits and anxiety symptoms, and (3) CD with severe CU traits. Variants differed in external validation measures assessing anger and irritability, externalizing behavior, traumatic experiences, and substance use. The CD variant with moderate CU traits and anxiety symptoms had the most severe pattern of psychopathology. Our results also indicated distinct profiles of personality development for all three variants. Gender-specific comparisons revealed differences between girls and boys with CD on clustering and external validation measures and a gender-specific cluster affiliation. The present results extend previously published findings on variants among aggressive and antisocial adolescents to male and female adolescents diagnosed with CD.

Activity Systems and Moral Reasoning: An Intervention Study

Seventeen social educator students were taught to analyze their work activity by means of a Vygotsky-inspired method, drawing on Engeström's notion of an activity system. The method aimed at increasing the consciousness of the students of the structure of work activity system. The participants wrote two accounts of their field-work practice experiences in child welfare institutions, six months apart. The accounts were blind scored for Kohlberg moral judgment stage and for the ethic of care level. While few instances of care reasoning were identified, most of the accounts could be coded for moral judgment stage. Stage 4 (or higher) reasoning increased from 22% at Time 1 to 59% at Time 2. It was interpreted as due to increasing reflection of one's activity, induced by use of the tools provided by the teaching. We also present evidence of socio-cognitive conflicts that involved a normative orientation attributed to the permanent staff of the institutions and a more flexible orientation of the students.

Between rights and realities – music as a structuring resource in child welfare everyday life: a qualitative study

How is music related to adolescent agency and possibilities for various forms of participation in everyday life? This article is based on interviews of 15 adolescents with experiences of their everyday life in the Norwegian child welfare system. The participants were between the ages of 18 and 23 years, and they have all been living in a child welfare institution. They have also been participants in a community music therapy project, with activities such as playing in a band and writing songs. In this article, we focus on the aspects of these adolescents’ experiences of their everyday situation in child welfare and on how they use music as a resource. We analyse and discuss our empirical findings from two theoretical perspectives – a human rights perspective and a sociocultural perspective. The human rights discussion is related to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), in particular with regard to the concept of participation. The sociocultural perspective highlights conditions that enable participation. The findings suggest that experiences of stigma and lack of constructive dialogue with adults are central to their everyday life experience in child welfare aftercare. Participants in the study were able to use music to structure stories and facilitate dialogue with peers and adults. We discuss these findings in the light of contemporary theories on resources for agency and participation.

Resistance as a means of creating accountability in child welfare institutions

This paper investigates the identity constructions of youths who are objects of special interventions in the area of child welfare. The aim of the paper was to explore the various dimensions of resistance to institutional identities among youths in special schools and foster-care institutions. Interviews were conducted with adolescents aged between 12 and 15, identified as having social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. The analysis generates knowledge about society's interventions as well as how adolescents respond to offered institutional identities by adopting different kinds of discursive resistance. The paper highlights the different types of discursive resistance that adolescents use to present themselves as accountable individuals and discusses the importance of considering resistance as a positive force rather than as something that must be defeated.

Looking for best practice in caring for disabled children: a case of socialized foster care in China

This study focuses on the problems associated with caring for children with cerebral palsy (CWCP) in Chinese State Children's Welfare Institutions (SCWIs). It considers how to place these children with foster families and also provide them with the best rehabilitation services. In a pilot project, one SCWI trained foster parents as rehabilitators and provided services to CWCPs living with foster families in selected rural communities. The practice was very successful over the last decade, and more than 600 CWCPs in these communities are growing up happily. Hence, specialized foster care projects could be a solution for all SCWIs in China, where most of the institutionalized children are disabled.

Developing an Inventory of Organizational Innovativeness of Social Welfare Organizations Focusing on Community Welfare Centers and Child Welfare Institutions

Developing an Inventory of Organizational Innovativeness of Social Welfare Organizations Focusing on Community Welfare Centers and Child Welfare Institutions

Lost Childhoods in a New China: Child-Citizen-Workers at War, 1937–1945

This article examines the emerging discourse of child-citizen-workers in wartime China and demonstrates how this concept of children’s citizenship was put into practice in work training programs within wartime children’s homes. This article argues that the idea of child-citizen-workers grew from three pre-war antecedents that converged and were greatly accelerated by China’s war with Japan: the new idea of an autonomous sphere of childhood articulated during the early Republican period; a progressive education movement to introduce labor training and experiential learning as essential elements of modern education; and Nationalist state-building and activist efforts at family reform, which viewed traditional parents with distrust and increasingly intervened in family life. The second half of the article focuses particularly on orphans, who were considered potentially unstable social elements due to their position outside the control of families, and whose lack of parental protection made them available for appropriation. This article demonstrates that the war opened up a space in which Guomindang state-builders, working with educators and childcare workers, attempted to restructure orphans lives within wartime child welfare institutions to realize a vision for China’s future: the ideal of child-citizen-workers habituated toward sacrifice for the nation.

Imagined Orphans - Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested Citizenship in London

442 Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 21 No. 2 (Winter 2011) ISSN: 1546-2250 Imagined Orphans – Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested Citizenship in London Murdoch, Lydia (2006). New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press; 252 pages. $44.95. ISBN 9780813537221. As Victorian studies scholars are aware, the century between the early 1800s and the early 1900s was fraught with massive social, political, economic and geographic changes. In her academic treatise, Imagined Orphans, Lydia Murdoch examines a topic that touches on many of those issues. Her account of the underlying story of child welfare in 19th century London is a fascinating look at the complex array of societal issues that were at play during the Industrial Era. Murdoch, an historian on the faculty of Vassar College, writes of the various events and trends in child welfare by conducting a narrative and visual analysis of a wide-range of sources, both primary and secondary. She examines photographs, advocacy pamphlets, flyers, books, legislation, writings of child welfare activists, accounts of children who utilized the “poor law” system and philanthropic institutions, and accounts of parents of children who utilized those systems. The stories told by these sources help illuminate some of the history of our modern institutions of child welfare and protection. They also peel away many of the layers of mythology surrounding the experiences of poor children in London during the 19th century. According to Murdoch’s research, the commonly held belief that poor urban children in 19th century London’s child welfare systems were almost always orphaned or abandoned is inaccurate in many cases and purely fictional in others. She unearths examples of situations that were misrepresented by child welfare providers and activists, as well as examples of children who were presented as orphaned, when in actuality their parents had placed them in the poor law or philanthropic systems as a means of obtaining social 443 service aid when they most needed it. However, while Murdoch’s introduction to the text suggests that this is the main point of her findings, I would argue that the book is broader than that. Only two of the book’s six chapters directly deal with the issue of parental agency in the child welfare systems of Victorian London. In those two chapters, Murdoch makes a fine case for her argument that contrary to the mythologized views of London’s poor children being orphans and waifs with no adult guidance, parents and other guardians were actually very involved in their children’s welfare. Parents turned to the child welfare systems, both the government-controlled poor law system and private philanthropic organizations, in times of great economic and family hardship. However, this did not mean that they abandoned their offspring at the doors to the facilities. There is ample historic documentation to show that many parents remained active in their children’s lives and welfare even after the children were admitted to residential facilities for child welfare; this documentation gives a much fuller picture of the lives of the urban poor in London at that time. Beyond this, Murdoch’s main thesis, are four additional chapters that provide a chronicle of how the child welfare practices and discourse related to the larger issues of class, citizenship, religion, and gender. In the course of the book we learn that: the Victorian penchant for melodrama in literature leaked into the way poor children were portrayed by philanthropists and others working with them; the burgeoning middle-class values and expectations significantly impacted ideas about the appropriate physical environments for raising children and housing them in institutions; the trends in women’s rights included movements to give women more control over the nation’s child welfare system and practices; religion impacted the structure of philanthropic child welfare facilities; and training for citizenship and employment became a central driving force in the programming of child welfare institutions. These various descriptions and interrelationships are key to what I feel is actually the central theme of the book: the genesis of modern Western child welfare practices. It is amply clear from Murdoch’s work how many of our modern practices and 444 difficulties developed, and where we still struggle with certain issues over...