Foster Carer Applicants - Case Study Example

Case Study on Foster Carer Applicants I. Introduction Foster caring is a delicate matter that needs thorough understanding on the part of the foster care applicants as well a informed guidance from the social workers handling the selection process. In the UK, the British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) adopts strict guidelines which adoption agencies and case workers must abide. There are times when the selection involves ethical and moral questions that have to be address with care and with utmost integrity. To better understand the aspects of foster caring and the processes involved in the selection of carers, let us look into the theories applied in this area. Our focus will be on systems theory and how it affects the selection process as specified in the Form F of BAAF of our case study. i. Systems theory Social care workers provide personal care and support services to individuals, families and communities (NISCC 2005)1 to meet their common needs, give them quality of life (Social Care Association 2005)2 and enhance capabilities to help become as independent as possible (Wing, 1978). 3 In the context of child foster caring, putting a child is good hands are the ultimate goal of foster child caring. More often than not, these kids are undergoing difficult and troubled times and needs extra care and attention. Thus, it is imperative that they be provided with a stable and loving environment in order for them to be socially, emotionally, physically and mentally well adjusted. This case study aims to illustrate the role of the social worker in the assessment and selection of foster carer using the systems theories applicable in social work. As a focus system in this case study, we will be relying more on family therapy theory in relation to ecological perspective through the use of ecomap while tracing the linage of the prospective foster carers using a genogram. Furthermore, as a method of gathering additional information regarding our applicant foster carers, we will also use hypothesis and narrative methods. On the outset, we focus much of our discussion on the assessment stage where we give focus on the family. The key concept of an ecological model is the innate interconnection of events and the dual effect of these events on the organism, in this case of the individual and the family and its environment. An ecological perspective views human development from a person-in-environment context, emphasizing the principle that all growth and development take place within the context of relationships (Connard and Novick 1996). Thus, in our case, we must study our subjects in the context of their family environment while taking into consideration the family being a part of a community and the larger society.4 Note that in the ecological perspective, the most logical model of a family is a system (Connard Novick 1996) Although we find many critics of this concept (Hinde. 1989), we adopt the approach the stand that a family can be called a “systems perspective” (Kreppner and Lerner. 1989). From her we proceed to the following family-centered approaches as described by Connard and Novick, which are as follows: a. Interdependence. This should be understood to mean that a piece or part of a system cannot be isolated and understood as a separate entity of the whole. For instance, one cannot adopt the description of one family member as the description of the entire family. One must take all the pieces of the puzzle together in order to make a complete picture of the family. b. Subsystems. A whole system is actually an aggregate of small segments of the system, which we will refer to as the subsystem. In the context of the family, we can glean that subsystems will include spousal subsystem, parent-child subsystems and sibling subsystems. A family’s roles and functions are defined by its subsystems (Fine 1992) c. Circularity. This is the chain reaction in a system whereby an event or a member to a system influences the other members of the system. It’s like a domino effect where there is a chain reaction to a single action. d. Family rules. Rules operates as norms within a family and serve to organize family interactions (Kraus and Jacobs. 1990)5 e. Communication. All behaviour is viewed as interpersonal messages that contain both factual and relationship information (Kraus and Jacobs 1990).6 To further lay-down the premises of this case study, let us look into the things included in the family’s ecology. Let us summarize these as follows: a. Family as the nucleus b. Informal social network, which should be understood as the social networks, that grows out of the families’ interaction with other people in different settings such as extended family, work, recreation and other social groups. c. Community should be understood to include organizations both professional and recreational d. Society including existing social policies, the economy and culture, which affects the way family functions. ii. Critics There are many critics to systems theory. Karen Healy7 and Malcolm Payne8 are two of the most staunched critics of this system. However, Lechner views the process in this manner, “Not everything in life is systemic to be sure. But looking for what is there already enables observers to capture much of what is significant in living together. (Lechner 2000). The idea is that an organic system and its parts functions to sustain life, multiple sub-groups are individuals served as comments for a big system that function to sustain life (Lechner 2000). 1. Case Study ii. Background Before we discuss further our subject, let us look back on how we arrived at the assessment of this case and who are involved in this study. i.i The Service User MN and TM entered into a relationship 14 years ago. They have been cohabitating for the past 10 years. They plan to marry within the coming year. TM and MN have applied to become foster carers through a private fostering agency. TM is a 44 years old male. He is cohabitating with MN, a female, and they have two children (sons) D1, 6 yrs and D2 5 yrs. They are of black British decent. TM’s mother is now 65 yrs. He did not know his father. His mother married to Dix had three daughters. TM is close to his second sister, who is in a relationship with M and has two daughters. TM’s oldest sister is in a relationship with his second partner’s brother and has two children. Due to this their relationship is a little strained. TM had three previous relationships. All partners are black Caribbean decent. By first partner he had 1 daughter (26). By second partner he had 1 daughter (24) and 1 son (20). Third partner he had 1 daughter (16). On the other hand, MN is the only child of her father and the second child of her mother. Her half brother is 14 years her senior. Prior to her relationship with TM, NM had one relationship with GL and they had a son. GL come from a mixed parentage. To trace their family history and lineage, please see genogram below: F i.ii The Agency and the Procedures Followed Facilitating the application of TM and NM as foster carers is the GLF Agency, a private fostering agency. They assess and register their won foster carers using the BAAF form F 2005. This is a standard tool used in this sort of intervention. Embodied in the form are stipulations on the sequence of work and also possible time limits. Form F recommends that each applicant is seen at least six times. There should be a combination of joint sessions over a period of six weeks. All adult extended members of the family should be seen and interviewed as well as children within the family. All ex-partners should be interviewed for the couple as they may hold vital information regarding the capacity to interact within a relationship. The completed Form F’s go to the panel consisting of independent members, one while male, three females and two of ethnic minority decent. The agency receives most of it’s referrals for foster placements from the local authority social services departments. Therefore, the audience that will use the Form F is local authority social workers and managers. i.iii My Role As a student social worker placed within the private fostering agency, I am tasked to conduct an assessment of the couple as potential foster carers. In executing the assessment, I am supervised by my practice assessor who oversees the assessment through supervision of the process. Service users were given this information and asked if they have no objections. Issues of rage, gender and age are also acknowledged at this point. iii. Application of Systems Theory on the Assessment Process 1. The Genogram At the first part of this paper, we introduced the genogram of TM and NM. By definition, a “genogram” is a pictorial vision of a family through three or more generations. Genograms are tools that capture the family history, highlighting the relationships, births, loses, connections, patterns, roles, occupations, alignments, communication patterns, health history and support (Lechner F. J. 2000). What are the advantages of making a genogram to draw out information from the subjects? The genogram is a participatory process of assesses the family or individual. By encouraging them to participate in the drawing process, the caseworker and the clients can build rapport and asking questions in a non-invasive manner is made possible. In application to our case, by letting TM draw a genogram of his family, I can extract information from him, which he may not willingly divulge if I were merely asking him direct questions. For instance, if I ask him directly how he feels about his relationship with his father, he would probably answer in brief that he doesn’t know his father. But by letting him draw lines, I can ask him why he did not draw a line connecting himself to his father. This may elicit another answer, which may reveal more information. Furthermore, regarding his other relationships, I can establishing the evolving patterns of these relationships through the genogram by asking questions such as, “ As what you have draw in the genogram, you are very close to NM. Do you foresee any events that might affect this relationship in the future? Or questions like “To what extent will you go to preserve such peaceful and harmonious relationship?” Questions such as these will generate other answers if asked directly without establishing the degree of the relationship. But where the subject is already very engrossed in the idea of relationships, he might be more open to answering questions pertaining to it. By keeping a positive inquiry attitude using the genogram, I can extract more information, which are not normally revealed in ordinary interviews. On the other hand, the drawing of a genogram will help us establish patterns of relationships in the past and present situations. This way, we can see how the relationships along the family tree have evolved in the past and what are the patterns established throughout the generations (Rudi Dallos & Ros Draper. 2nd (ed) 2005). Out of these established patterns, we can draw some hypothetical conclusions on how interventions should be preceded to help the client and to assess his/her suitability as foster carer. By application to our case, let us look at the relationship patterns of paternity on the part of TM. TM did not know his father; his on his past three relationships are not close to him. In fact, his children of his second relationship discontinued visitation at the instance of their mother, as he had not been a father to them for quite some time. By tracing these events along the family tree, we can find the causal relations between TM’s perceived inability to act as a father to his children from the other 3 relationships can be hypothetically traced to the fact that he never know his father. By using the genogram, we can help the client trace the roots of his/her perceived problem. Furthermore, by employing systems theories in drawing hypothetical conclusions of the situation, we can establish options for interventions. 2. Ecological perspective, Eco Map. In order to locate the family in its systems let us make an ecomap for TM and NM. An ecomap is a pictorial representation of a family’s connections to persons and/or systems in their environment. In our illustration, the dimensions govern in each connection namely: 2. The strength of the connection which can be classified as weak (i.e. tenous/uncetain) or strong 3. The impact of the connection ranging from none, draining resources or energy to providing resources or energy 4. The quality of the connection whether it is stressful or not stressful In assessing these situations according to our dimensions, we take into considerations the standard domains, which should be looked into when assessing probable foster carers. At this point, we acknowledge the limitations of our case study where we only have data for two domains, which are the family and the existing community social services. Thus, in interpreting our ecomap, we focus on two aspects, which are family relations and community services (this should be taken in the context with legal implications and the courts). As the outputs presented in our case study is more focus on the relationship in the family and TM’s criminal history, our diagram only shows how these factors affect TM and NM. The fact that no lines were drawn connecting TM or NM to the other domains signifies that there was no established connection between them based in our case study. What does our map show and how is the system applied in this phase of the assessment? An ecomap give us a structures, consist process for gathering specific, apt and very valuable information, which are related to the current state of the family or individual being assessed. It supports the engagement of the family in a dialogue that can build rapport while identifying and illustrating strengths that can be built upon and address the weakness of the family or individual. Applied in our case study, we look into these structures by gathering insights through narratives of family members as in the case of the children of TM and his former partners. By identifying the degree of connected to each other and drawing the appropriate lines that describe such degree of connection, we are able to present a picture of how TM relates to the elements and events surrounding him. It gives us an idea that he draws strength from his mother and from NM but has a weak relationship with the other members of the family. Furthermore, we can clearly see in the diagram that his relations with the community social services, which are herein, defined as legal parameters and the law is stressful to him. This due to the fact that he was arrested for sexual assault at age 16 and was sentenced at age 18 and served sentence for 8 months. Drawing hypothetical assumption reinforced by narrative statements of TM, the stress present in his relations with the other domains in the ecomap makes him distrustful of others. His only strong connection and high degree of trust can only be traced in his relationship with his mother and with NM. By the same token, we can draw hypothetical conclusions that since TM have never been good in terms of fatherhood as evidenced by the patterns established in the geneogram and reinforced by the relationships established in our ecomap, we can infer that he is not really very excited about fostering caring for a child. On the other hand, NM has stable relationships as established in our genogram and ecomap, thus we can conclude that it is her who really wants to apply as foster carer. On the other hand, her strong relationship with TM may have influenced the decision of TM to follow the lead of NM. Now we must look into the aspects of attachments and how it will affect the decisions and actions of an individual being assessed. The strength of the ecomap therefore can be clearly seen on its capability of presenting the dynamic developmental processes surrounding the subject including the way stress, coping and adaptation, which may eventually lead the social worker to the right intervention to use in the case at hand. 1. The Larger Society Foster caring does not only affect the family that is directly involved in the process. A big responsibility of the Agency handling assessments for foster caring applicants is to look at the bigger picture of the wider society. In our case, GLF Agency therefore have the responsibility to see to it that they assess the client thoroughly in order to protect the interest of the child who will go to such foster home and to protect the interest of the state at large. To do this, the Agency much look closely into the CRB checks of the applicant’s criminal records and cultural background without drawing any prejudicial conclusions at the outset. In our case, an assessment of the criminal history of TM should be conducted by the Agency involved to establish circularity. According to fostering regulations and fostering minimum standards there are no bars but tension arises that this is a sexual offence and he is applying to work with children. As per facts presented in our case study, the current climate in the U.K about sexual offenders working with children is rife. The other thing to understand is the linear causality and we cant see this as TM is the cause and effect, but wider social and political context needed to be explored as this was in the 1970’s and a group of black youths being accused of a sexual offence. We must bear it in mind that the causes of sexual abuse are multiple and complex. The professional should be aware that the abuse has its origins in some level of sexual feelings and superego deficits on the part of the perpetrator. In addition it is important to systematically examine the context of the victimization for cultural, environmental, individual, and family factors that contribute to sexual abuse. The role played by these factors will vary from case to case. (Faller. 1988) At this point we acknowledge that the Agency have already established a stake on the process since it has already invested resources into this assessment and would not want such investment to go to waste. With this realization, we come to an ethical question on how we should go on with the assessment and how the outcome thereof may be affected by the need of the company to recover the expenses it has incurred on this case. At this juncture, we make it clear that the Code of Ethics of Social Work places paramount importance on the welfare of the child, which will be placed in the foster home. It has to be clearly established that the company have the legal and moral obligation to deliver what is due to its stakeholders. The outcomes of this assessment will have tremendous impact on the life of the foster child involve as well as the circle he/she may be in. The positive or negative events following a placement will cause a ripple of effect in the structures of that person’s econmap and genomap in the present and future, which will eventually affect the wider society. 2. Conclusion The application of systems theories in the assessment of foster carers is very important. Although these systems theories have its weakness, it cannot be denied that it serves as strong baseline in assessing whether the applicant foster carers are fit for the job. Family patterns and relationships will give us great insights into how the individuals in the system work and how they are affected by the events surrounding their system. Furthermore, by looking into the family sub-systems, we can see how these sub-systems relate to each other internally and how they relate externally. In connection with professional practice of social workers, systems theories afford a systematic way of looking into the scenario at hand. A shared power perspective on practice rooted in "web thinking" (Lowery & Mattaini, 1999, 2001) requires the connectedness principle of ecosystems. With the use of an ecosytems perspective, practitioners are afforded the valuable insights that allow them to recognize the co-relation between the past and the present experiences of the subject and establish useful trends. There are many scholars who would disagree on the absoluteness of these establish patterns (Healy. 2005) and there are those who thinks that this not sustainable (Payne 2005). For his part, Wakefield (1996a), in his critique of the ecosystems perspective, suggested that it is not very useful for assessment. On this point, I beg to disagree. The perspective generated by a genogram or ecomap has stimulated the development of tools for assessment, including the ecomap direct the practitioner’s attention to potentially critical areas that are otherwise often missed (Jordan & Franklin, 1995). Also, it draws the attention of the practitioner factors that may have a major effect on cases although at the moment it cannot be addressed directly. For instance, experiences drawn from subjects of color may warrant recognition of racism issues which at the moment could not really be addressed directly but must be recognized. Limitations and boundaries of systems are understandable. In fact, if really take a hard look into the origins of these systems, the fact that theses systems have boundaries are integral parts of the creation of a self-organizing process ( Mattaini & Meyer 2005)9; We must bear it in mind that there is a need to establish boundaries of a system to keep processes in check, otherwise, we run into a kind of infinity that will not serve our purpose at all. The application of systems practice in social work, specially the selection process of foster carers in the UK is aimed specifically at gaining useful information that will help us assess our cases. Systems theory such as the ecomap and genogram will finally help us draw understandable pictures of relationships and trends. We must always remember that in ethical questions involving shared decisions, systems theory is important as the subject/client is always involved in the process. It is a co-creative and interactive process and do not impose arbitrary limitations. Finally, let us always bear it in mind that social work assessment in this case is not primarily geared towards diagnosing the clients problems but rather how the clients past experiences would make him/her suitable or unsuitable as foster carer in relation to the guidelines issues by the BAAF. We must therefore stick to the ethical balance between promoting the welfare of the child which would be adopted and the need of the client who is applying for adoption. Systems theory should always be taken in the ethical context of honouring the transactional realities of life. Bibliography 1. Bentovim,A & Bingley Miller,L (2002) The Assessment of Family Competence, strengths and difficulties. London. Pavillion 2. 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