Administration for Children & Families of the Essay

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Administration for Children & Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Children's well-being has become an issue of crucial concern not only in the United States but also across the world. Homelessness, poverty, racism, and violence shape the childhood experiences of millions of youth and children. Child welfare advocates and grass root activists have been working tirelessly to put the concerns of youth and children on the public agenda in both national and international realms. Major reforms are underway in some nations to offer new systems for considering the upbringing and care of children in traditional post-industrial world. A number of proposals are forthcoming for programs, intervention technologies, and policies. Nevertheless, some of these proposals have challenged the fundamental aspects of the child welfare system because it has been in place for centuries. This analysis is necessary to come to terms with the history of the ad hoc, fragmented, and reactive interventions by policymakers that have generated minimal basic reforms.

This paper examines factors shaping the field of child welfare: private and public domains, the importance of autonomous individualism, and the level of corrective intervention. These factors are historically encoded in the practices and structures of the child welfare system. They shape the policy makers' perceptions about the families and children the system serves. Regardless of a long history of reforms, these factors continue to be entrenched. While addressing these factors, policy makers can free their thinking to explore new approaches of child well-being.

Public and Private Domains

The necessary and natural separation of private and public domains has a long history. This factor was articulated by Aristotle who defined the public as the political domain where men participate as full citizens. In this context, the public domain has been constructed as the realm for labor, government, and decision making while the home and the family constitute the private domain. Historically, the aspect of private and public realms has been expressed in alternative forms, which variably cross cut the landmarks of charity, state, market, and family. The emphasis on separation of the state and the church is premised on this factor just like the folk theory of the free market economy representing the government of market relationship. This aspect is problematic and is subject to challenge. It has posed concepts of individual rights against notions of public interest. Here, the family is represented as a single, private interest entity distinct from public domain. This assumption has drawn attention to both extra and intrafamilial power relations.

Additionally, in the context of child welfare, this factor serves to sanctify the family's privacy while polarizing the sanctity of the family and the best interest of children. This polarization assumes the innate values of the child's right to treatment and the family's right to non-interference. With this in focus, questions regarding the family are right to social support, the coercing aspects of treatment, and extra and intrafamilial relations are not addressed. Non-interference in the family characterizes the policy of middle class families while the reverse is often expressed towards single parent and working class families. The latter families have undergone persistent coercive control and intervention in the name of the child welfare system.

Schools have assumed a key role in the socialization of children. Perhaps the growth of the public education system reflects the sweeping penetrations of the allegedly different domains of the private and public. The public education system was originally projected as a strong means of democratizing society. However, the goal has been displaced. Public education has become a critical mechanism for the differential socialization of children for their positions in the stratified labor market. As an outcome, the school has become a government-funded arm of the labor market. Recently, the education system has gravitated towards becoming an institution for custodial control of youth and children. Revamped emphasis on improving education today offers an opportunity to transform this crucial policy and the education institution (Child Welfare Policy Manual).

The importance of Autonomous Individualism

The importance of autonomous individuals has been gravely embedded in western culture. This social foundation has been portrayed in and institutionalized across the United States constitution that is premised on the value of individual rights and liberties of citizens. The factor of the autonomous individual has polarized the notion of independence and dependence and has delegitimized the concept of interdependence. It is implicitly seen in religious ideologies founded on beliefs in individual salvation and sin. Ironically, beneath the importance of individualism lies a strong ethic of conformity.

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Cultural practices and understanding related to community, family and children, who differ from the dominating values of a particular historical context, have been dubbed as deviant.

However, an individual's capacity to conform is strongly influenced by access to resources and rights. The failure to conform has earned the label of defiance that justifies extremely repressive forms of social control. Coercive control has been disproportionately imposed on the poor and minority group members. The history of practice in children's institution and schools has been a rigid discipline that suggests the value of control against caring. A well-disciplined student is socialized to become the well discipline individual employee. Schools recognize the deficits and achievements of individual students while children's institutions continue to focus on the delinquency and pathology of the individual child. More recently, dysfunctional families attracted a lot of attention, widening the scope of pathology while emphasizing the location of pathology within the individual member of the family instead of the political economic relations or structures (Child Welfare Policy Manual).

Today's discourse in child welfare has emphasized the importance of individualized treatment. Beneath this recognition of individuality lie the assumptions regarding conformity and the value of individual adaptation to current social expectations, which illustrated the dominant values of white and male middle class world. These practices have served to blend practitioners question race, cultural differences, gender and class inequality as they affect their own social positions and clients. This factor has affected individual's conceptualization of childhood. Historically, children were valued and viewed as economic resources, chattel, and objects of sentimentality and affection. Children have not been viewed in terms of their personhood. Minimal concern has been expressed about their innate rights. Children are often seen as political because their political rights have been ignored in the child welfare policy and practice. As such, policy makers have failed to recognize the differential effect of institutional power relations on childhood experiences (Child Welfare Policy Manual).

The Capacity for Corrective Intervention

The primary mandate of Control and care institute society, to the child welfare system is to support and promote well being of children in the context of affective attachment. Control policies are those that constrain and limit a child's actions including socialization towards self-discipline. Control and care are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they coexist in many child-welfare programs. The practices of control and care are driven by the aspect of an individual's capacity for corrective intervention. Ethical prescripts regarding doing good and the "can do" attitude have converged to sanctify the truth-value of this factor. The expansion of scientific knowledge bases and the growth of new technologies have triggered the belief that individuals have both the resources and the capacity to help. The aspect of corrective intervention has been embedded in the cultural practices, which include the aspect of autonomous individualism and private and public domain. Therefore, individual beliefs regarding doing well are compatible with a comprehension of correction, which concentrates on individual remediation and pathology. The historical prominence of the medical paradigm in juvenile justice, neglect and dependency, child abuse and mental health illustrates how this factor is powerful (Child Welfare Policy Manual).

The child welfare and the juvenile justice systems are major conduits for the placement of children in and out of home care. This term marks the coercive element of child removal. Emerging evidence shows that this discretionary government power has extended to the charity and market through practices, which support the confinement of youth and children in a range of institutions. Expanded discretionary power often results in wider intrusion into less powerful families, with negative outcomes for children's well-being. With a growing service economy, the potential profit in caring services is a building concern and poses a threat to the differentiation of altruism and profit motive. In recent years, the proliferation of chemical dependency and for-profit psychiatric facilities has exemplified market encroachment into the allegedly private domain of the family, which has already been claimed by the state and charity.

Conclusion

This study has discussed the three perspectives that seem to have been crucial to the development of child welfare practice, policy, and structures. Policy makers are tasked with developing a curious avenue that will challenge these perspectives. This will enable them to develop empirically verifiable propositions to the child welfare policy. The application of intensive family treatment services preventing the out-of-home replacement will fail unless these policies are geared to address the key causal factors driving child placement. These factors include poor housing, unemployment, poverty,….....

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