A state that undertakes custody of a child is declaring that it can do a better job providing protection. This system is a powerful agent of support, providing positive nurturing environments that enable a child to reach his or her potential. Nonetheless, when children suffer additional abuse in the system, this government intervention should be questioned. In "And Still We Rise," Miles Corwin chronicles the daily struggle of gifted students in 1997’s South Central L.A. Even with abundant street temptations and challenging peer experiences, these students find refuge in a school system that affords them both happiness and hope. Everyday is a challenge, and yet, they continue to strive for success. The novel offers insight into a corrupted system that is failing today’s youth. This system places children into state custody with environments that are academically and socially incompetent. These children suffer within a corrupted system that denies resources and attention during the most crucial period in their emotional development. They develop very few meaningful adult relationships, endure damaging environments, and ultimately become trapped in a system that often leads to a prison life. Corwin highlights the corrupted foster care system through detailed progression of the central character, Olivia. She is one of the most brilliant students in the novel and views school as a positive distraction from the daily physical abuse she encounters at home. In a sense, intelligence saves her. She manages to disconnect her emotions and use her intellect to excel in and out of school. With a molested mother and lack of father figure, Olivia becomes a ward of the county. Children who enter foster care often have been exposed to condition... ... middle of paper ... ...ildren encounter in the system. Another obstacle Olivia and Sabreen encounter is the lack of adult support in the foster care system. Family support is a crucial variable mediating the influence of neighborhood on a child’s development (Burton & Jarrett, 2000); nonetheless, Olivia and Sabreen receive little support and guidance and must quickly survive on their own. Once Olivia receives help, it is perhaps too late. In her senior year, she is sentenced to a juvenile camp, and is clearly out of place. “She is so different from the other girls (pg.312)”, her therapist says. “She was one of the rare kids we see who is focused on her future. I wish I could have started with her when she was twelve or thirteen (pg.312).” Olivia’s case illustrates a system that rather than providing guidance and support to abandoned children, it leads them into a criminal world.
...ices, the medical field, teachers, and administrators could all benefit from reading about Kathy and her family. People who are considering taking part in fostering certification should definitely read Another Place at the Table. The events she walks the reader through are not common events taking place in the traditional family. It would help any professional who may be exposed to the Social Service System to understand the systematic process that a child in foster care experience, the good, and bad. So many professionals are mandatory reports and they know nothing about the system as it relates to the child’s experience. Hearing how these children and the foster homes they occupy could benefit from quality assistance and support would provide improvement to the system.
In the book, Till the end of June, by Cris Beam. The overall theme is about foster care. Foster care in relation with the kids, the parents who take care of the kids, and the corporations that oversee the foster parents care and guidance. The book is broken up by parts, each part has different foster parents caring for different foster children. A lot of the book is regulations that both the kids and the parents must undergo. A lot of kids have come from dysfunction homes and are either forced to foster care or our put there by the choice of the parent(s). I believe the author was trying to accomplish the fact of what the kids and parents go through in tough situations.
Last Chance in Texas: The Redemption of Criminal Youth, by John Hubner, follows Hubner as he observes the “worst of the worst” juvenile offenders at Giddings State School. This treatment program is truly a “last chance” for may of the adolescents there – their last chance to change the direction of their lives before ending up in jail. Hubner takes the reader through a gripping and emotional journey as the teenagers go through the Capitol Offenders group and delve into their past hurts, childhood years, and reasons that contributed to their involvement in crime. Each member of the group must tell their life story and crime story and relive them by observing both in a drama, as well as participating in their crime drama as the victim. Once they have experienced this, they attempt to identify what caused their behavior, change it, and learn how to prevent future crimes.
Cassie O’malley was put in a mental institution by her mother for two and a half years. At the age of 18, she is able to make her own decisions and take her life back into control. She is anxious and nervous to see how she will do out in the real world, with not being told what to do. When her mom had arrived to pick up Cassie, it had been the first time her
Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences. Petersilia, Joan. 1999. Parole and Prisoner Reentry in the United States. In Prisons, edited by M. Tonry and J. Petersilia. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
All the benefits provided by CAPTA are important, but one highly important benefit CAPTA provides for infants and children is that all allegations of child abuse and neglect must be investigated to ensure the well-being and safety of every infant and child. After allegations of child abuse and neglect are reported an investigation is the next step in protecting every child. Another benefit of CAPTA for infants and children is that if the heart wrenching experience of child abuse or neglect occur the state CPS systems and private organizations are trained and prepared to provide treatment for the child. In a like manner, CAPTA provides benefits for women and families by providing support and services that address domestic violence. CAPTA also promotes family involvement in all aspects of a CPS case involving child abuse and neglect. The states benefit by the foundation that CAPTA sets regarding the functioning of CPS systems and in a financial aspect. CAPTA provides funding to “Support child abuse and prevention activities by funding discretionary grants to states and/or public or private agencies or organizations” (California Department of Child Services, 2011). Everyone benefits when CPS systems according to CAPTA policies, “The act’s sponsors meant to feature three important themes of CPS reform in these amendments, including encouraging the involvement of family members in a child welfare agency’s decisions process; promoting and enhancing COS collaboration with domestic violence services and substance abuse treatment programs, and increasing the use of differential response by states through the use of noninvestigative/nonaccusatory approach to responding to reports of child maltreatment” (American Bar Association,
Many children across the country are wrongfully removed from their homes everyday by workers with an anti-family mindset, who use removal as a first resort not a last. It is not only detrimental to the child’s well-being, but is also immorally abusive to the child. The goal of the child welfare system is to promte safety, permanency, and wellness among all children.
The book, No Matter How Loud I Shout, takes an in-depth look at the juvenile court system in the state of California in the 1990s. Through a colorful narrative story the author, Edward Humes, paints of vivid picture of the how dysfunctional the system truly was. The main focus is on the various ways the system has failed many of the juveniles that it is intended to help. Peggy Beckstrand, the Deputy District Attorney, says it best “The first thing you learn about this place, is that nothing works.” (No Matter How Loud I Shout, 1996, p.31)
“About two-thirds of children admitted to public care have experienced abuse and neglect, and many have potentially been exposed to domestic violence, parental mental illness and substance abuse” (Dregan and Gulliford). These children are being placed into foster care so that they can get away from home abuse, not so they can move closer towards it. The foster children’s varied outcomes of what their adult lives are is because of the different experiences they grew up with in their foster homes. The one-third of those other foster children usually has a better outcome in adult life than the other two-thirds, which is a big problem considering the high percentage of children being abused in their foster homes. Although, the foster care system has most definitely allowed children to experience the positive home atmosphere that they need there is still an existed kind of abusive system in the foster care program that is unofficial but seems to be very popular. Foster care focuses on helping children in need of a temporary stable environment; however, foster care can have negative impacts to the children and the people around them concerning the foster child going through the transition, the parents of the foster child, a new sibling relationship, and problems that arrive later influencing the foster child long-term.
The job of a child welfare worker appears to be a demanding profession that promotes the child’s safety, but also strengthens the family organization around them in order to successfully raise the children. This child welfare workers work in the system known as the Child Protective Services whose initiative is to protect the overall welfare of the child. The short novel From the Eye of the Storm: the Experiences of a Child Welfare Worker by Cynthia Crosson-Tower demonstrates the skills necessary to deal with the practice of social work along with both its challenges and its happy moments. The novel consists of some of the cases involving Tower’s actual career in social work. In reading the book, I was able to experience some of the actual cases in which children dealt with physical and mental abuse from their families that caused them to end up within the system. Also, some of these children had issues in adapting to foster and adoptive families based on the issues they faced earlier in life. As we have learned earlier in the course, the violence that a child experiences early in life has an overall affect on the person they become as they grow into adulthood. When children deal with adverse childhood experiences, they are at a higher risk for abusing drugs and/or alcohol, increased likelihood of abusing their own child or spouse, higher rates of violent and nonviolent criminal behavior, along with several other issues throughout their lifespan.
Vacca, James. (2008). Children of Incarcerated Parents: The invisible students in our schools—what can our schools do to help them? Relational Child & Youth Care Practice, 21 (1). 49-56.
The challenges of children who grow up with parents whom were incarcerated at some point in their childhood can have a major effect on their life. The incarceration of parents can at times begin to affect the child even at birth. Now with prison nurseries the impregnated mother can keep her baby during her time in jail. With the loss of their parent the child can begin to develop behavioral problems with being obedient, temper tantrums, and the loss of simple social skills. Never learning to live in a society they are deprived of a normal social life. “The enormous increase incarceration led to a parallel, but far less documented, increase in the proportion of children who grew up with a parent incarcerated during their childhood” (Johnson 2007). This means the consequences of the children of the incarcerated parents receive no attention from the media, or academic research. The academic research done in this paper is to strengthen the research already worked by many other people. The impact of the parent’s incarceration on these children can at times be both positive and negative. The incarceration of a parent can be the upshot to the change of child’s everyday life, behavioral problems, and depriving them a normal social life.
Bernstein, N. (2005). All alone in the world: children of the incarcerated. New York, New York, USA: The New Press.
On any given night in America, 10,000 children are held in adult jails and prisons. Nationwide, it is becoming easier to try juveniles in adult criminal court. Between 1992 and 1997, 44 states and the District of Columbia passed laws making it easier to facilitate the transfer of juveniles to the adult system. Although the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) requires that youth in the juvenile justice system be removed from adult jails or be sight-and-sound separated from other adults, these protections do not apply to youth prosecuted in the adult criminal justice system. In the text “The Prisoner” the author Skip Hollandswroth uses an individual character and his prison situation to illustrate the use of pathological