Dr. Thomas Waldock
The Central Region Foster Care Project was originally the initiative of the eight central region children's aid societies; the agencies involved in the project are Durham, Toronto, Toronto Catholic, Jewish, Peel, York, Halton, and Simcoe Children's Aid Societies. The project, well underway at the present time, has serious implications for child welfare practice in the central region. The project was divided into two phases. The first phase dealt with foster care recruitment, training, and rates. At the time of writing, consultation in phase one has taken place, and the goal is to move towards implementation vis-a-vis phase one during the consultation period of phase two, which deals with services to the foster family, services to children, and coordinated access to the system. Given the importance of the project for agencies, foster parents, and children served by the foster care system, it is prudent that we identify, discuss, and debate some initial observations and concerns. It is hoped that this piece will facilitate that discussion.
These observations and concerns can be structured around two central themes or questions: (1) Is a region-wide foster care system, - with all foster homes in the region pooled together as one large placement resource for the eight agencies – in the best interests of children in the care of children's aid societies?; and (2) Does this project represent the best response and '‘real solution’ to one of its central motivations, which is to potentially enhance the quality, supply, and flexibility of internal placement options for the increased numbers of children coming into care, thus decreasing reliance on expensive outside pay resources. In short, does the pooling of central region foster homes represent the best solution to the often-referred-to crisis in foster care.
The Best Interests of Children
The idea of pooling foster homes into one large placement resource comes up against a kind of common-sensical objection in relation to the best interests of children. When has it ever been case that the quality of service is enhanced by making something larger? Ostensibly, there is no reason in principle why bigger can't deliver better service; it just so happens that in practice it almost always never does. In child welfare, the best interests of children are the primary consideration, and thus quality of service is or ought to be front and center. This is why it is imperative that we explore some of the concerns related to a region-wide foster care system. What might ‘larger’ mean in practice, in terms of the quality of service to children, and ultimately to their quality of care?
Accountability and Responsibility
A basic concern related to the quality of care revolves around the issues of accountability and responsibility. When a child is admitted to care, the admitting agency ultimately becomes the child's legal guardian; let us refer to this agency as the ‘guardian agency’. A children's service worker is assigned, and this worker becomes responsible and accountable for the child while in care. The guardian agency, then, is collectively responsible for the child, and the worker assumes an individual responsibility. This situation ensures a direct line of accountability and responsibility flowing between the child, on the one hand, and the worker/agency on the other. How would a pooled system of foster homes affect this accountability/responsibility relationship? Before addressing this question, it is helpful to visualize the existing system (see figure 1 below).
Figure One
| GUARDIAN
AGENCY |
|
|
Child In Care
Foster Home |
While there will be variations in the numbers and ‘titles’ of workers that make up the agency team, - depending on the agency in question – the schematic in Figure One generally conveys the strong and clear connection (represented by solid lines) between the guardian agency/workers on the one hand, and both the child and foster home on the other. Importantly, while the children's worker has the most direct connection and responsibility to the child, this relationship is supported and fostered by the fact that all members of the team not only know of the child, but often also the foster home. In some agencies, resource workers have the most direct connection and interaction with the foster home; yet regardless, from the approval stage onward; there is a direct agency connection to the foster home. Aside from their resource worker, foster caregivers may have worked with other members of the team in the past or otherwise developed relationships with them through other agency activities and involvement, whether formal or informal in nature. All of this is no small matter, of course. After all, the foster home is where the child in care lives. Thus, the overall strength and nature of the agency/child relationship encompasses the agency/foster home connection; to put this another way, the agency/child relationship cannot be viewed separately from the agency/foster home connection. In this regard, responsibility and accountability to the child in care goes beyond legal requirements, and needs to be supported and fostered by the working dynamics of the system.
Just how would a pooled system of foster care affect these dynamics? Figure two below allows us to visualize this:
Figure Two
| GUARDIAN
AGENCY |
|
|
Child In Care
Foster Home (Outside Agency) |
Since foster homes in the central region could potentially be pooled into one large placement resource for the eight central region agencies, a child might be placed in a foster home with very little connection to that agency. This is represented in Figure Two by the broken line between guardian agency and the foster home. The child's worker will continue to have the most direct connection and responsibility to the child, and other members of the team will be aware of the child as well. However, the child's worker, along with other members of the team, will have only a tenuous connection to the foster home. Indeed, foster home resource workers (employed by some agencies) in the guardian agency will perhaps have no relationship to the home in which the child is placed. Over time, of course, a pooled system will mean that foster homes are technically no longer ‘outside’ of the guardian agency; they become shared resources, and the agencies will have collaborated in such areas as approval and recruitment. Yet aside from the fact that the existing system will take a very long time to change, particularly with regard to homes that have been with agencies for a period of time, it is inevitable that the agency/foster home connection will lose some of it vitality in a larger, pooled system. Thus, the overall strength and nature of the agency/child relationship (outlined in relation to Figure One) will be fundamentally altered, and the working dynamics of the system will become less supportive of agency responsibility and accountability to the child.
The central task for project members and working groups is to design a pooled system that avoids the situation outlined above? Before getting to this stage, however, an initial question must be addressed: Is it possible to avoid the situation outlined above, given the general framework of a pooled system? Even if the ‘pool’ represents only a portion of the homes in the region, the dynamics are the same: the guardian agency and foster home/child connection would be weakened in relation to these homes. While this can be visualized in terms of the issues of responsibility and accountability, it is also evident when we turn to a discussion of practical concerns from the perspective of foster caregivers, children, and natural families. What are some of the issues/circumstances that might arise? The interconnectedness of agencies, caregivers, children, and natural families will again be evident.
Practical Issues and Concerns
Foster caregivers face a situation in which they may have children in their homes from more than one guardian agency. Children would still come into the care and guardianship of one agency, but would then be placed in homes that theoretically had no particular affiliation. Initially, project members considered a relatively independent, ‘free standing’ model or structure whereby foster homes would work under the aegis of this one overseer. This would still make the foster care system larger, - and we might want to question this development for the reasons already elaborated – but it has the advantage of standardizing policies and procedures through the mediation of a unified structure. This might mean a great deal in practice to foster caregivers. For example, if they had children from more than one agency in their home, the policies and practices related to those children would be consistent, since they would be emanating from the same source. After all, it is important to avoid a situation where children under one roof would be treated and regarded differently depending on the policies and procedures of their guardian agency, since this would create a situation of inequality between children in the same foster home.
At any rate, other foster caregiver concerns present more difficult problems for this model. For example, where would the foster parent resource and support meetings take place? They could not take place at on central location, since distances would be prohibitive. If they were to take place locally or by geography, participants may find it much more difficult to relate to other members of the team. For instance, a particular foster caregiver might have children from three agencies, but the resource worker at such a meeting might not work for any of these agencies; moreover, other foster caregivers might have very different situations as well.
The independent structure model, or even some form of common management structure, might address concerns about consistency and equality within homes, but it does so at a cost: the guardian agency becomes less relevant in the day-to-day experience of caregivers, and to some extent children. In short, it wouldn't matter which agency was the guardian agency, because policies and procedures related to the foster care system would emanate from this structure. To put this another way, agencies would have to give up some of their existing autonomy. Yet such developments would beg the question: are we not logically eliminating some percentage of an individual agency's ‘reason-to-be’, at least in relation to foster care? Further, if a unified structure with identical practices makes sense in relation to the foster care system, why doesn't it make sense in other areas of child welfare practice? In this day and age of pressures for amalgamation, such questions are bound to be asked. How can we apply one standard of logic to the foster care system and a different standard when it comes to other areas of child welfare practice? For example, why have eight different organizational and management structures, or eight different systems of intake and investigation? In my view, there are some very legitimate reasons and principles behind the existence of eight structures, with the principle of providing service to particular communities front and center. But that is not the issue being addressed here. The real point is this: don't many of these same principles apply in relation to the provision of foster care? Further, is there not a case to be made that they apply even more, since this ‘system’ is where many children in the child welfare system actually live?
It may be the case that project members decide to opt for a less dramatic organizational ‘form’ feeling that standardization of key agency practices will be enough. Yet potentially, this only exacerbates the dilemma. Each agency has its own particular culture, and there are many discrepancies between agencies when it comes to policies and practices related to foster care. To the extent that we back away from a unified form and complete standardization, we open the door to these differences. Again, if a caregiver had children from three different agencies, what would that mean in practice? Would the children receive identical services? Would Christmas and birthday allowances be identical? Would policies around sending children to camp be the same? Would there be no discrepancies in terms of support to the foster home; for example, would a caregiver have trouble getting funding for one-to-one relief for a very difficult or troubled child, simply because of the guardian agency in question, while a less troubled child in the home received this service because of his/her agency affiliation? One could come up with a very long list of such examples. Of course, such discrepancies exist now across the system, - between agencies and jurisdictions – and this is a problem in its own right. But it is a very different matter if such discrepancies potentially occur within the same home. To the extent that we back away from the standardized form, we risk the ‘in-home’ fragmentation of practices and services to both caregivers and children. In a pooled system, any autonomy for agencies would be highly problematic.
What are some of the other practical concerns for caregivers, children, and their natural families? One of the principles often enunciated within child welfare is keeping children connected to their communities if at all possible. Indeed, the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies (O.A.C.A.S.), in the context of discussing the usage of outside pay institutions (O.P.I’s), has lamented the placement of children outside of their community. (1) Yet in terms of the potential consequences of placement outside of home communities, it seems difficult to distinguish the realities of a pooled system from the use of outside resources. Pooling agency-run foster homes in the central region would invariably result in children being placed farther away from their home community. At the very least, it certainly would make this practice of removing children from ‘what they know’ to do justice to them all here, but a few examples will suffice. Children growing up in urban environments might be placed in rural areas, and visa-versa, resulting in a kind of ‘culture shock’. Connections with natural families – whether it be parents, grandparents, or siblings – might be seriously undermined and harder to maintain: travel distances and expenses would come into play, in relation to both agencies and family (time off work and so on); and the practicality of having children (particularly young children) in cars for hours at a time would be an issue. Furthermore, existing connections to community-based resources would be affected, and this could have implications for both children/families and workers/agencies: children might get cut off from services (therapy or counseling services, for example) that guardian agencies were employing prior to admitting a child to care, since there would be practical reasons – distance considerations, absences from school, and so on – to relocate such services to a child's ‘new’ home community; and the child's worker would have far less knowledge of services in the new home community, - since the agency as a whole would not have developed significant connections to services in other communities – again affecting his/her responsibility/accountability relationship to the child.
Of course, community means more than geographical location and community linkages; it often encompasses other aspects of our experience as well. The Catholic and Jewish Children's Aid Societies make religious ‘community’ a component of their service mandate. Any substantial resource benefits for these agencies would seem to be tied to the general ‘watering-down’ of their mandate's religious dimension. Two scenarios seem likely: more children would be placed in non-affiliated homes; or existing and new Catholic/Jewish homes, if placed in the pool, would have children from other backgrounds and denominations. A host of questions arise. Would a Catholic child, for example, continue to attend Catholic Church if the rest of the foster family did not? Would such a child attend Catholic school? Is it reasonable to expect foster caregivers to accommodate such situations? Is it even wise; for example, would it not be better for children to be in the school that has a relationship with foster caregivers, as opposed to a school that the caregivers had never worked with before. Such situations also work in reverse. Children of different denominations who are placed in Catholic or Jewish homes would have their experience altered as well.
Is Pooling the Best Response?
If we question the kind of structural change that pooling represents, what is the alternative? Avoiding increased reliance on outside pay resources is a legitimate goal, and not simply for reasons of cost; some of the concerns raised in this paper – around accountability, for example – apply to such resources as well, and therefore the status quo also has implications for the quality of care. How can we improve the quality, supply, and flexibility of internal placement options? Simply put, we need to go to the root of the problem. The lack of internal placement options results from an inability to attract and retain sufficient numbers of qualified foster caregivers. Going to the heart of this reality – and answering the question ‘why’? – allows us to begin fleshing out some of the fundamental barriers to recruitment, and indeed to fostering itself. Certainly, general observations are readily apparent. For example, most couples today are working two jobs between them, and attracting one of them to fostering becomes a very difficult proposition. Why?
The fact is fostering is simply not viewed as a career choice; for the most part, it is not viewed as such within child welfare, let alone in society in general. The simple but underlying truth is that fostering even lags behind other caregiving occupations, such as child care and shelter work, in terms of its legitimacy as a profession. Such occupations, while they still have a long way to go, have made great gains in terms of becoming socially recognized forms of work; for example, they now require socially recognized qualifications and training. One of the many ironies of the status quo is the following: child care workers, who often watch our children in formal setting during the day, increasingly require degrees in early childhood education, and they often have benefits and so on; foster caregivers, who deal with a more vulnerable population of children for seven days a week, consulting with agencies, natural parents, psychologists, lawyers, and sometimes judges – and often functioning as parent/therapists themselves – require less formal training, and often receive less daily remuneration than what people pay their neighbours for providing daycare. Until fostering itself moves forward in terms of recognition, money spent on recruitment efforts and campaigns will have only a ‘bandaid’ effect. In the same sense, it is legitimate to ask whether the proposed pooling of foster homes in central region – aside from the concerns associated with this strategy – really addresses the same kinds of fundamental problems.
In the short-term, the goal should be one of embarking on the right course, and beginning to take steps forward. In relation to foster care, the right direction is clear enough. Foster caregiving needs to move forward as recognized work, both within child welfare and in society in general. Progress in this respect encompasses many ‘goals’. We need quality practitioners with socially recognized training and skills to meet the needs of children in care; we need to provide remuneration that recognizes the contribution of caregivers to child welfare. One could go on. (2) Yet much can be done in the short-term. Indeed, some agencies have been progressive in attempting to develop their own internal systems, and others should follow their lead. Only in this way will caregiving itself develop in the right direction. If it does, we will begin to solve problems like the inability to recruit adequate numbers of qualified practitioners. More importantly, we will begin to address the most fundamental issue, which is the quality of care. Pursuing substantial solutions in foster care would strengthen the foundations of the child welfare system.
Endnotes
1) Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies, “About Child
Welfare, CAS Facts-1998”
(O.A.C.A.S., 1998)
2) 2) T. Waldock, “Professionalizing Foster Care: The Welfare
of Children” (The Social Worker, Vol.64(3), Fall 1996).