Aging Out of the Foster Care System: Challenges and Opportunities for the State of Michigan - Case Study Example

 Aging Out of the Foster Care System: Challenges and Opportunities for the State of Michigan EXECUTIVE SUMMARY With rising numbers of youth in foster care, there are increasing numbers of youth also aging out of foster care. Although child welfare agencies have had an ongoing concern about the experiences and outcomes for these youth who transition out of care, in recent years more has been learned and new programs developed to assist this population. The studies of this population have been limited in size and scope but a consistent picture emerges: former foster care youth experience disproportionately high rates of homelessness, unemployment, and involvement with the criminal justice system. More likely to drop out of high school and less likely to attend college than other young people, these alumni of the foster care system face many challenges in addition to overcoming the abuse, neglect, and separation from family already experienced in the child welfare system. In response to these needs, with federal support, states’ efforts have expanded beyond traditional independent living programs to include a range of services and assistance supported by the federal Chafee law of 1999. A number of states have instituted tuition waiver and other financial assistance packages for former foster care youth to attend college. The programs developed in a number of states are presented in this report. The challenge for the state of Michigan is similar to the challenge to other states: developing a comprehensive continuum of services for foster care youth that begins while they are in high school and continues past their discharge date from foster care. The development of a tuition assistance program that supports four years of college education and addresses the expenses beyond tuition is another area for exploration. The expenses associated with such programs would be offset by young people who are employed and meeting their potential contributions to society. In addition to financial needs, young people need information and encouragement to succeed as adults and fully enter into society Abstract (Summary) Ruffins discusses a case in which a two-year-old boy was returned to the custody of his mother, who was convicted of killing her infant daughter in 1992, because the child is black and his foster family was white. He argues that it's time to change adoption laws that always favor the biological parents, and to study the outcome of interracial adoption. Copyright Crisis Publishing Company, Incorporated Feb/Mar 1998 Little Cornelious Pixley has been sentenced to life with his mother. A Maryland circuit court judge recently awarded her custody of the two-year-old, even though she killed her infant daughter in 1992 and has since been convicted of other crimes. The judge held fast to a Maryland law that strongly favors the rights of natural parents. But the real motivation for the decision may have been the fact that Cornelious, who is black, had been in the care of a white family while his mother was in prison. The judge rejected the foster mother's petition for adoption, stating that an AfricanAmerican child would be better off with an AfricanAmerican parent. Rulings like this one make The Crisis believe it is time to rethink America's adoption politics. It is not clear that keeping children with their biological parents at all costs is in the best interests of the child, particularly when the mother or father has a history of severe child abuse. Couldn't Cornelious have been placed with a loving African-American family? However, it is also time to question the National Association of Black Social Workers' opposition to transracial adoption which was formulated in 1972. Since then, our society has had much more experience with children growing up in interracial families. Thousands of families have adopted children across ethnic and racial lines, so it should be relatively easily to study the outcome, and base adoption policies on solid research, not just a professional hunch or political prejudice. The current guidelines have removed this child from a loving home and returned him to a murderer. Title: Adoptees Do Not Lack Self-Esteem: A Meta-Analysis of Studies on Self-Esteem of Transracial, International, and Domestic Adoptees. By: Juffer, Femmie, van Ijzendoorn, Marinus H., Psychological Bulletin, 00332909, Nov2008, Vol. 133, Issue 6 Database: Business Source Premier Adoption can also be conceived as a situation offering protective factors and mechanisms. It should be noted that empirical studies and meta-analyses without exception have concluded that the large majority of adoptees are well adjusted and that the problems are shown by a (relatively large) minority (Bimmel, Juffer, Van IJzendoorn, & Bakermans–Kranenburg, 2003; Juffer & Van IJzendoorn, 2005; Nickman et al., 2005; Van IJzendoorn et al., 2005), pointing to protective factors in the adoptive family context that foster resilience in the adopted children. Adoption has been described as a natural intervention in the lives of adopted children (Johnson, 2002; Rutter, O'Connor & the English and Romanian Adoptees Study Team, 2004), leading to a remarkable catch-up in most domains of development, outperforming the children left behind in institutional care (Van IJzendoorn & Juffer, 2006). The change of environment from institutional care or from a birth family without resources to a usually nurturing adoptive family is drastic and turns children's development in a positive direction. Adoptive parents are usually well educated, and they generally provide the adopted children with an enriched and nurturing environment (e.g., Schwartz & Finley, 2006; Stams et al., 2000), although less is known about how they embrace and accept the cultural heritage of the child (but see Lee, Grotevant, Hellerstedt, Gunnar, & the Minnesota International Adoption Project Team, 2006). The often substantial parental investment and the support offered by the social environment (e.g., peers, teachers) may provide adoptees with protective factors, resulting in increased competence and resilience. The question here is whether for adoptees these protective factors are powerful enough to result in normative self-esteem or whether the risk factors take their toll and lead to low self-esteem. African American Perceptions of Adoption by Azizi Powell It should be expected that African Americans would so strongly value blood ties. We are a people who were created by the tearing asunder of families beginning on African shores and continuing legally and church-approved, under American skies. It was a commonplace occurrence for United States slave holders to sell Black children away from mothers and siblings, and fathers from them all. Black blood ties were of no significance. And because blood ties did not matter to whites, they mattered a lot to Blacks. From early childhood, Black children are taught to respect family. At all costs, families are to be kept together. Family looks out for family. A member of your family can be counted on to come to your defense, to lend you money when your funds are low, and take in your kids when you are too sick and beat down to look after them yourself. You are obligated to do for family. For a Black person to fail to help blood kin, to turn his back on his family, is to commit a terrible moral act against his self, against members of his family, and against the whole society. Blood ties people together. In the past, it was believed that, in the womb, babies inherited their mother's values as well as the traits she inherited from her people. The mother is the life force. Because institutional racism in the United States affects Black males more harshly than Black females, Black children depend more on the parenting of the mother than their fathers. Mothers are supposed to be there for their children. They are supposed to be strong, self-sacrificing, and able to endure despite the oppression around them. And if she needs a temporary respite, a woman's mother or her aunt or her sister is obliged to mother her children. Blood speaks to blood, and flesh and blood counts for much - but how much? Things are bad all over and the Black family's mutual aid system of informal adoption is breaking down under the pressure of crack, prison, poverty, middle-class material success, death, and do-your-own thing individualism. What are we to do about the children? There are a lot of motherless children unable to go home to blood kin. Before there was a Los Angeles gang called "Bloods," Black people called all people of African descent "bloods." And blood flows in every body. So what is the problem? Lack of Information/Lack of Access Most Black people have considered agency adoption to be a "for Whites only" parenting option. In spite of specialized adoption recruitment efforts targeted at Black communities, some African Americans still believe that the only children available for adoption are healthy White infants and the only people who can adopt them are rich, infertile, White couples. African Americans usually equate agency adoption with the child welfare system. And the one thing most Black people know about "child welfare" is that its first name is "problem," its second name is "red tape," and its last name is powerlessness.... African Americans often identify child welfare with its protective services, and foster care components, not adoption. Child welfare doesn't give kids to people; it takes their kids away. Although agencies are always lamenting that they do not have enough Black foster and adoptive families, it is common to hear African Americans tell that they contacted an agency to adopt children or "take in" a foster child, but that they either did not get a call back or got such a run-around that they finally gave up. Lack of Obligation to Non-Blood Kin Notwithstanding the disproportionately large number of Black children in the child welfare system, African Americans do not feel a real moral duty to incorporate non-related children into their family unit. But among many segments of Black society, there remains a great deal of community acceptance and approval of informal adoption. Persons who temporarily or permanently take on this added responsibility are respected as having met their obligation to their family. Failure to provide assistance to blood relatives - especially children - is perceived as reneging on one's duty as a family member. One's guilt in failing to make room for one more is greatly a multiplied if the bureaucratic child welfare system steps in and removes the children, perhaps forever, from the family. Classism, Resentment, and Buying Babies Most Black children available for adoption are from poor families. Most Black people who apply and are approved for adoption are at least middle-class in income. This dichotomy causes some African Americans to resent agencies who don't do enough to keep families together in the first place. Some also express resentment against "middle class Black people who take poor people's kids and adopt them." Agencies that charge fees to adoptive parents are particularly looked down upon. No amount of explanation about staff salaries, rent, and utility bills will change the fact that fees for adopting children can be interpreted as "buying babies." Even African Americans who have money do not want to be accused of buying children. And what of Black people who cannot afford to pay the fees but who can provide a secure, loving home? Economic barriers should not be placed in the path of creating new kinship ties. Perceptions About Birth Mothers Few Black adoptive parents want to share adoptive children with their birth mothers. Many Black adoptive parents feel that the birth mother had her chance to parent, forfeiting any contact with the child when she signed away her parental rights. These parents do not see themselves as hard-hearted. They say they are protecting their adopted children. They feel that contact or information will prompt the birth mother to want more. It is believed that birth mothers should move on with their lives, that contact only increases birth mothers' pain. They feel they have to protect their adopted child from the confusion that is bound to occur from having two mothers. Besides, who is to say that the birth mother has the same values and lifestyle as the adoptive parents? Most Black adoptive parents do not even consider meeting the birth mother, and will only send non-identifying letters and photographs if the agency strongly suggests or insists they do so. Open Adoption Black adoptive parents' fear of open adoption is as real as it is baseless. The fears about birth mothers coming back to claim their birth children are constantly fueled by community sentiment, sensationalized television programs and the gossipy tabloid press. Black adoptive parents have few first- or second-hand experiences with open adoption. They know no success stories. Stigma, Fear and Love Many people hold the view that the relationship between adoptive parents and their adopted children can only approximate the relationship between "real" parents and their "own" children. Many African Americans retain a latent conviction that parents cannot help but love their biological children more than they love other children - even if they are raising these other kids. The love they feel for an adopted child is different, lesser than what they feel for their "own" flesh and blood. Many Black adoptive parents feel that if you open up your family to the birth mother, you open your family to community stigma. There is a stigma to being an adoptive parent and there is a stigma to being an adopted child. Black people still accept the notion of a child having "bad blood" because his mother and father were considered to be no good. There will be questions about an adopted child's background. If a school-age child is adopted, "obviously" there has to be something wrong with him or his family. And if a couple goes public with their adoption, they'll hear questions such as, "What's wrong with you? Couldn't you have your own children?" As a result, many adoptive parents just want to get their adopted child and blend back into the crowd of Òregular" African American families. The Stigma of Voluntary Adoptive Placement Particularly in poor and working-class neighborhoods, Black birth mothers who voluntarily place their babies for adoption catch much hell if the community finds out about this decision. Many Black birth mothers face tremendous pressure from family and peers to keep their babies. In some cases, mothers of pregnant young teenagers may already be raising other grandchildren and will let their daughter decide whether she wants to keep her baby or place the child for adoption. Just the fact that birth mothers have this choice marks a new era. It used to be if you were pregnant and did not believe in abortion, you had the child and you and your family raised the child. If you were not ready to parent psychologically, you got ready. The rise of Black adoption recruitment efforts is changing all of this. Birth mothers who hear about Black adoption figure that if agencies are accepting Black people as adoptive applicants, they must be accepting Black babies, because agencies sure are not going to give White kids to Black people. And so, gradually, an African American birth parent has a does-she-parent or does-she-not-parent choice that White pregnant women have had for years. Read More