The Foster Care System

Throughout the years more and more youth are being separated from their families and are being sent to foster homes. As more children and youth enter foster homes they are also staying longer periods of time, meaning that something is not working as efficiently as it should be in the foster care system. These children and youth are being sent to foster homes because the types of relationships that they encounter at home with their families are no longer healthy relationships. There are multiple types conditions that may have some risk factor for child maltreatment. When child maltreatment begins to emerge within the homes it is no longer a safe environment for the child to grow up in. Although child maltreatment is one of the primary causes

for entering a foster home there are other causes to consider.
Some children and youth are sent to foster care because their parents may be experiencing a disability where they are no longer capable of caring for their child.

Mexican immigrant families undergo through an extensive amount of stress, which eventually leads to their involvement with the welfare system. These two conditions previously mentioned are to a certain extent different. Nonetheless there is a commonality, which is that the children of these families will be sent to the foster homes if they find that some aspect of the environment that they reside in is no longer safe for them to live in. In addition, many of these children and youth will have the opportunity to reunite with their families while other won’t be as fortunate and will eventually age out of the foster care system. After being involved with the foster care system for a certain amount of time the children and youth become deprived of learning certain skills in order to be successfully independent in life. Some foster cares lack the resources that these youth need in order to be able to survive and have a normal transition from the foster home care to

adulthood.
Thus, the purpose of this literature is examine what conditions have emerged within the families in order for their children to become part of the foster care system? The conditions being evaluated are child and parent separation due to a disability and child and parent separation because the impact of stress on Mexican immigrant families. When addressing children the analysis will be referring to the age (0-21 years of age) group that are allowed to be involved with the foster care system.
Children removal from Mexican immigrant families:
According to the United States census Mexican immigrants are the largest migrant group in the United States with a population size of about 11.5 million people. This vulnerable population endures very stressful moments on their way to the United States. Once they arrive many families may encounter violence, robbery and sexual assault on their way to the United States (Dettlaff, Earner, and Phillips 2009). However that is just some of the stressed experienced on their way to the United States they still undergo through a lot of stress, depression and anxiety as they try to adapt to their new environment, language, and culture. Upon their arrival to the United States these families begin to experience poverty, a difficult time finding employment, and crowded living conditions. Mexican migrant families tend to have a difficult time qualifying for food stamps, housing assistance and health insurance. The conditions recently mentioned in addition to the stress of settling into a new place and acculturation are the fundamental factors as to why these families become involved with the child welfare system. Acculturation is a crucial factor that many Mexican migrant families experience, this occurs when the families come in contact with two different cultures. Furthermore, acculturative stress comes into play when families feel that they are not successfully adapting to the new environment that they are now residing in. Adapting to a new environment may be challenging for these families because their primarily language isn’t the one they speak, they must also adapt to a new culture, most of the time these families are not completely economically stable and must form new connections within their new community (Lemon and Han 2011).
All these circumstances cause the family anxiety and depression therefore adding reasons as to why Mexican immigrant families become involved with the child welfare system. The number of children and youth in the foster system continue to increase as the years go by however the percentage of solely Hispanic children is also increasing from 37% in 1999 to a 52% in 2009. This study is assessing the reunification outcomes that were discovered among Mexican immigrant families that are involved in the child welfare system, the results obtained of Mexican immigrant families were then compared to the characteristics of Mexican-origin and non-immigrant children involved in the child welfare system (Lemon and Han 2011). From the data obtained by Lemon and Han 70% of Mexican immigrant families were reunified compared to a 43.1% of non-immigrant families.
It’s been proven that there is a higher chance for 2nd generation Latino children to be involved with child welfare compared to 1st generation Latino immigrants (Lemon and Han 2011). The reason being is that 2nd generation Latino children are more exposed to being in homes where there is alcohol usage, their parents have a history for being arrested, they may also be in a home where their parents suffer from intellectual impairment, poor parenting skills, causing high levels of stress within the family as a whole (Lemon and Han 2011). However those who have a higher rate of experiencing sexual abuse are Latino immigrant children.
Parental disability as a reason for removal:
Its been proven that those who enter the foster care system because their parents have a disability experience a different outcome than those children and youth who enter the system for a different cause. As stated by Lightfoot and DeZelar (2016) these children and youth “are less likely to have a case plan goal or reunification with their parent or caretaker, and are less likely to have a permanency related case plane goal”. Findings state that in 2012 19 % of children who were reported to have been removed from their homes was because of their parents disability appeared as one of the reasons listed and a 5.18% of the child and youth were placed in foster care because their reasons relied solely on their parents disability (Lightfoot and DeZelar 2016).
For instance those with cognitive disabilities its been proven that they are more involved with the welfare system than those without a cognitive disability (Lightfoot and Slayer 2014). A parental disability poses risks factors for child maltreatment. To better understand this Lightfoot and Slayter (2014) explain that poverty and lower levels of educational fall under factors that could lead to child maltreatment. Therefore those who suffer from a disability have don’t have high rates of graduation which indicates that they will potentially have to high poverty rates leading this population to have risk factors for child maltreatment. Additionally there is a 32.8 of parents with disabilities that experienced neglect as they were growing up and those parents who don’t have a disability as a child only 15% reported to having ben experienced neglect at home. Mayes and Llewellyn (2012) state that because a parent has a disability doesn’t necessarily mean that they will neglect or abuse their children. However, due to the parent’s disability 40 to 60 % of parents will have their child removed from their home.
Mayer and Llewellyn support Lightfoot and Slayers statement that the main reason children are removed from their homes is because of additional reason such as poverty, the absence of family support and previous history of abuse (2012). It ‘s highlighted that some of these parents with intellectual disabilities don’t fully understand why their children were removed from their home. Although the parents kept constant communication with their children because according to the parents understanding their children would return home if they were able to obtain help with their behavior and gain knowledge on appropriate parental behavior.
Aging out of foster care:
Upon the children and youth’s arrival they try to receive the most help that they can.

Healthy living conditions are provided for them such as food, a form of financial stability in order to obtain what they need such as clothing. Some youth may have the support of a family member when they exit the foster care system however those who don’t have the financial and emotional support can face challenging times when they begin to live on their own. Youth in foster homes are provided a place to live however at time it may not be stable because they may be assigned to a different foster parents depending on their situation. Having to experience moving around may cause depressing and giving youth a challenging time developing as adults and gaining the experience they need to be completely

independent.
In some foster homes youth are able to leave the home by the age of 16 and other by the age of 18. Therefore some care providers are responsible for keeping close contact with the youth till the age of 21. It’s been advised that a plan should be set for the youth starting at the age of 16 so that the appropriate resources are provided for youth if they choice to leave at a earlier age. This act had been enforced by The Children and Young Act of 2008 this act will allow care giver to keep closer communication with the youth until the age of 25 to confirm that they are living stable, independently and healthy lives (Hiles et al. 2013).
The method used to obtain these results for the stresses that Mexican immigrant families endure was done by a quantitative study using longitudinal design. By obtaining data through a longitudinal design it allows data to be studied throughout a longer period of time in order to get more accurate results. Through the information obtained it was concluded that Mexican-origin children spend more month in foster care than non-immigrant children. Among this population the proportion of Mexican-origin who were able to return to their families was high than that of non-immigrant children. Other data was obtain by using data that already had existing data from the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology surveys to obtain data on behavior health disorders (Lightfoot and Slayter 2014). The results concluded that the majority of the population who has a disability are males of Latino and White ethnicities and with a very low rate of high school completion. Through some case-level data it was proven that parents with disabilities suffer from discrimination and at time have their parental rights terminated. Furthermore through real life stories a narrative inquiry design data and interviews data was gathered on how the mothers that had lost their children where feeling emotionally. After listening to everyone’s statement the feeling that the mother was feeling were clearly understood by those other parents who also had their children taken away. By evaluating the methods and results of these studies we could conclude that these population are experiencing condition out of their control. These vulnerable and marginalized populations have limited resources therefore some information that could help these studies see results its putting together more resources that will help the root problem. By having resources that will target the problem from the start can have positive outcome of and higher family reunification rates for these marginalized populations.
In assignment 3 I will try to obtain most of my data from surveys and longitudinal data analysis. The strength of this would be that a lot of fields have been able to capture really interesting data based on surveys and there is mostly studies don’t through surveys. Some limitation that I think I may run into finding longitudinal studies might be difficult because since they are time consuming most people tend to not do those.