must have access to a wide variety of community services: health, education, welfare, housing, employment, rehabilitation, recreation. Public and voluntary child welfare agencies and organizations have the job of interpreting need for cooperative effort by community groups. Essential child welfare services These agencies also have the responsibility for providing child welfare services that families in every community require if children are to be nurtured and protected. Social services to children in their own homes are designed To assist parents to care for their children and to help the child with his social relationships, attitudes and feelings. To help parents use community resources. To protect children when parents are incapable of giving adequate care and when temporary or permanent separation seems necessary. To provide services to parents and children during temporary separations and after the child returns to his own home. Such services help parents or child adjust to the child's mental or physical handicaps and to resolve emotional and behavior problems. They also help in situations of neglect, abuse, or exploitation of children by parents or others responsible for their care. In Often parents come to agencies for help with these difficulties. other instances, agencies must be prepared to reach out to parents who do not ask for or perhaps do not even recognize their need for help. Services should be provided as early as possible to prevent serious difficulties. In many communities, particularly suburban and rural, social service programs for guidance and help to parents are not available. In urban areas they usually are not adequate to meet the need. A handicapped child in a family often imposes additional burdens on parents-which seem even heavier because of the lack of resources in the community. Too often, mentally retarded children are separated from their families and put in institutions because of lack of specialized guidance and counseling nearby. Thus social services to children in their own homes should include help to the mentally or physically handicapped and their parents. Child welfare programs must reach the increasing number of unmarried mothers, many of whom are mere children themselves. In 1957 an estimated 81,000 children were born out of wedlock to teenage mothers. Services must be geared to the individual girl, to the emotional and environmental causes that lead her to give birth out of wedlock, to her adjustment as a mature adult, and to her plans for her baby's future. Medical, legal, and social services, financial assistance, and shelter care must be available. Preventive and treatment services for children who are delinquent or in danger of becoming delinquent should be an integral part of child-welfare programs. Services should start at the first indication of behavior problems-problems that may lead to delinquency-and include children and youth coming to the attention of police and the courts, those in detention, State training schools and in aftercare, whether in the child's own or a foster home. Services that support and supplement parental care includeHomemaker service is designed to help preserve and strengthen a child's own home during the illness or incapacity of his mother, or when other problems interfere with a parent's ability to provide adequate care. It should be part of every community program. Homemakers, trained and supervised by the agency, help a family stay together during a crisis, assist inadequate parents with better childrearing practices and home management, teach parents how to care for a sick or handicapped child or help relieve them of constant care of a handicapped child. Day-care service assures protection and care of a child away from his own home during the hours that the family cannot provide care for him. This service is given in family day-care homes or in daycare centers established by public and voluntary family and childcaring agencies, social settlements, labor organizations, church groups, parents, and others. Uneven as they are in quality, they have one thing in common: they were set up in response to present-day conditions such as employment of both parents or of a lone parent, inadequate housing or play space, and special problems or handicaps on part of parent or child. More than 1 million mothers of preschool children have joined the labor force in the last 10 years. Yet during this period there was no appreciable increase in family or group day care services sponsored by social agencies. In May 1958 an estimated 401,000 children under 12 had to care for themselves while their mothers worked full time. No comparable information is available about need for day-care provision for children over 12, for children whose mothers are employed part time or whose lone fathers need this service, or for children whose parents want it for reasons other than employment. Nor is there information on how many parents are unable to meet the full cost of service. The majority of States lack either adequate funds, skilled staff, or legal authority to assure minimum education, health, and welfare standards for protection of children in day care or to provide good quality care for those who need it but who are not now receiving it. Agency-operated family and group day-care services adequate in quality and quantity as well as funds to cover that part of the cost that parents are unable to pay-should be available in all communities. Services that substitute for or replace the care of parents includeFoster care is provided for a child who must live apart from his own family or relatives, either with a family not related to him or in a groupcare facility, until such time as his problem is resolved and he can return to his own home. Foster care may be a longtime plan for the child with strong parental ties or the child so seriously disturbed or physically or mentally handicapped that he cannot remain in or return to his own home. In 1958 about 187,000 children were in foster family care under public and voluntary auspices, and some 142,000 children were in institutions of all types-approximately 84,000 in institutions for dependent and neglected children. Many children in foster care could be in homes of their own with natural parents or with adoptive parents if skilled social agency services had been available to help the natural parent either assume the responsibility of parenthood or give up his child for adoption. Lacking this service, children lose their parents through agency neglect as well as through parental neglect. Many children in foster care were separated from their families without an adequate study of the family situation or skilled counseling to them or their parents. Many have been placed and replaced with foster families who were not carefully selected. Unfortunately for the children, foster parents often receive little supervisory help or monetary reward-in some States less than $1.50 per day. Such low rates make it difficult to attract and retain capable foster parents, particularly those skilled in caring for children with difficult problems the seriously disturbed or handicapped who are increasingly coming into foster care. Children will have adequate foster homes only when child welfare agencies are able to give on-going supervision and when communities compensate foster parents on a realistic basis. Foster parents caring for children with special needs should be paid at even a higher level. Many preschool and school-age dependent and neglected children now in institutions would fare better in foster family homes-as would some emotionally distributed, mentally retarded, and physically handicapped children now in group care. On the other hand, some adolescent boys and girls now in their own. homes, foster family homes, congregate care institutions, or on their own would do better in small informal group homes close to community life. Some mentally retarded children require residential care closely coordinated with other community medical, educational, and vocational services. Emotionally distrubed children often need separate institutions. More specialized care should be set up for children with combinations of emotional disorders, physical handicaps, and mental retardation. Adoption has become over the years an accepted way for finding new families for children who need them. At the present time between 90,000 and 95,000 children are adopted in the United States each year. In the last 10 years about 10,000 foreign children have been adopted by U.S. citizens under special nonquota immigrant visas. An additional unknown number, for whom quota visas were issued, were also adopted. About one-half of the children adopted are adopted by relatives. Of those adopted by nonrelated persons, 40 percent were not placed by a child welfare agency. These are vulnerable to exploitation, their futures may be endangered by unwise or hasty placement in adoptive homes not suited to them. To safeguard natural parents, the child and adoptive parents, all placements with nonrelated persons should be made by authorized child welfare agencies. Legal, medical, and social services should be readily available to all parties and final adoptions protected by court decrees based on sound State adoption laws. Personnel Child welfare services to children and their parents depend, for both extent and quality, upon personnel adequate in numbers and in competence. 1 On the basis of a standard of 1.1 worker per 10,000 children in the population and assuming an estimated increase to 92,400,000, children under 21 by 1970 (from the 1958 estimate of 68,939,000), the United States will need, by that date, about 10,000 public child 1 This is the level of coverage maintained in areas covered by public child welfare workers in 1957-58. welfare caseworkers. In addition, the number of qualified directors, supervisors and consultants would have to be increased from an estimated 900 to 2,700 by 1970. The following summary tabulation sets forth an estimate of overall public child welfare staff needs which should be realized by 1970. Public child welfare staff with social work training needed in 1970 Caseworkers carrying caseloads... Assumes a level of coverage of 1.1 workers per 10,000 children. This level obtained in both 1957 and 1958 in areas covered by public child welfare workers. 10, 200 2, 100 Supervisors _ _ Assumes 1 supervisor per 5 caseworkers a level which, on the basis of present trends, might be attained during the period 1959–62 and be maintained through 1970. Consultants.. Assumes that relation of consultants to supervisor during period 1949-58, 1.9 supervisors to each consultant, will be maintained in 1970. Directors.. 1, 100 370 Assumes that ratio of directors to caseworkers, supervisors and consultants during period 1949-58 will be maintained in 1970. This ratio was one director to 36.5 caseworkers, supervisors or consultants. Total child welfare staff with social work training needed in 1970.. 13, 770 Public child welfare staff; present status and future training required Less than 1 year or none. Total fully trained child welfare staff needed in 1970. This increase will be required to hold programs at present levels and will permit no expansion of certain important services, such as homemaker and day-care services. The percentage increase of workers required to provide the necessary program for the future cannot be projected. But if children are to have a full range of services, expansion in personnel and funds far beyond present levels will have to be forthcoming. Requirements for adequate child welfare programs To serve children and their families effectively, child welfare programs must be 1. Available and readily accessible to all children who require them regardless of economic status, race, religion, citizenship, or geographic location; 2. Developed on a broad flexible basis to serve children's needs in a wide variety of situations; 3. Geared to help parents directly or indirectly in providing wholesome care and family life for children; 4. Designed as preventive services, available to families and children before crises arise; 5. Available for the full length of time required and used effectively; 6. Provided under a variety of auspices, within a well-developed community plan enlisting all interested forces in the community; 7. Based on sound diagnosis, planning, and treatment; 8. Subject to continuing evaluation and research; 9. Operated and supervised by personnel qualified to offer skilled services. * Goals usually represent hopes for the future and like many hopes. are not always bounded by reality. But the goals set forth here do represent stern reality in that they reflect changes occurring in our society in the last decade. They do not-and, of course, cannotreflect the changes that the future may hold for children. To meet these will require the most imaginative and creative planning that our Nation can muster. This is a future dimension that cannot be projected now-but that must be taken into account in the child welfare programs of tomorrow. |