Promoting effective working with parents with learning disabilities

The children of parents with learning disabilities are increasingly coming to the attention of child protection and children in need services. The current framework within which services are delivered identi?es the need to work cooperatively both across agencies and with parents themselves. The decisions taken by practitioners in the course of their assessment and support work should be in?uenced by a recognition of where the risks to this group of children lie and which factors are most likely to be associated with positive outcomes. This paper outlines risks to children associated with the parents' dif?culty in accessing appropriate antenatal care and the risk of developmental delay arising from both genetic and environmental in?uences. This group of children are also more likely to experience behaviour problems and language delay. Research has indicated a risk of neglect, but abuse, where it does occur, is more likely to be associated with partners or relatives. It is also clear that some children are more at risk than others, and intellectually able children, as well as those with high levels of dependency, may be the most vulnerable. Risks can be reduced when parents have access to good family and social support networks and professional support which is acceptable to them. Maintaining a small family size can also be helpful. If parents have had positive childhood emotional experiences, their chances of successful parenting are increased. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How do middle-aged employees combine work with caring for elderly parents?

How common is it for elderly employees to experience a squeeze between work and care obligations for their parents, and to what extent does this affect their behaviour in working life? To illuminate these questions, this article presents findings from a representative survey conducted in Norway in 2007. One finding is that seven out of 10 respondents (with one or both parents still living) are both employed and caring for their elderly parents. Fifty-seven percent have experienced difficult situations in coping with both. The most preferable arrangement is flexible working hours. Employees prefer the possibility to reduce or stagger working hours, or the option to work from home if necessary.     

Pflege der Eltern – Ein europäischer Vergleich*

Elderly people are predominantly cared for by family members. However, not every parent in need is cared for by a child, and not all family members are involved in care. Which factors influence the provision of care? Do European countries differ in regard to intergenerational care, and what are the reasons for these differences? The empirical analyses, based on the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland), show that various factors influence care by children: individual characteristics of parents and children, family structures and cultural-contextual factors, including welfare institutions. Intergenerational help occurs more often in Southern and Central European countries, where children are legally obliged to support parents in need. At the same time, in Europe professional home care services enable adult children to pursue their personal plans beyond care obligations.     

Shared Parenting After Divorce: A Review of Shared Residential Parenting Research

One of the most complex and compelling issues confronting policymakers, parents, and the family court system is what type of parenting plan is most beneficial for children after their parents' divorce. How much time should children live with each parent? An increasing number of children are living with each parent at least 35% of the time in shared residential parenting families: How are these children and their parents faring? In what ways, if any, do divorced parents who share the residential parenting differ from parents whose children live almost exclusively with their mother? How stable are shared residential parenting plans? By reviewing the existing studies on shared parenting families, these questions are addressed.     

Intergenerational transfers in long term care

How are parental inter-vivos transfers to their children and children’s informal care of parents influenced by personal characteristics, family conditions and state specific long term care policies? AHEAD data from 1993 and 1995 and a two-party choice model are used to guide the estimation of OLS and binary logit models of the amount and likelihood of inter-vivos transfers to children and informal care of parents. Results suggest that both parents’ characteristics and their offspring’s characteristics affect parental gifts to children and children’s time assistance to their parents, highlighting the interdependent nature of these decisions. Furthermore, though state policies did not consistently affect parental gift giving, the availability of state respite care support -short-term “breaks” for informal family caregivers- (1 % significance level) and adult day care centers (5 % significance level) were positively related to the amount and likelihood of children’s time assistance to their parents. These findings highlight the importance of some state programs such as respite care support in encouraging intra-family support for the elderly. Support for programs that reduce the caregiving burden may encourage more children to care for their elderly parents.     

Policy and practice for response to foster families when child abuse or neglect is reported.

For reasons discussed in this article, it is in the nature of family foster care that allegations of abuse and/or neglect in foster homes will arise. How an agency acts before, during, and after these eventualities has long-lasting implications for the well-being of foster children and of foster parents and their own children, as well as for foster home recruitment.     

Parental education, time in paid work and time with children: an Australian time-diary analysis

How does parental education affect time in the paid workforce and time with children? Potentially, the effects are contradictory. An economic perspective suggests higher education means a pull to the market. Human capital theory predicts that, because higher education improves earning capacity, educated women face higher opportunity costs if they forego wages, so will allocate more time to market work and less to unpaid domestic labour. But education may also exercise a pull to the home. Attitudes to child rearing are subject to strong social norms, and parents with higher levels of education may be particularly receptive to the current social ideal of attentive, sustained and intensive nurturing. Using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Time‐use Survey 1997, this study offers a snapshot of how these contradictory pulls play out in daily life. It finds that in Australia, households with university‐educated parents spend more daily time with children than other households in physical care and in developmental activities. Sex inequality in care time persists, but fathers with university education do contribute more time to care of children, including time alone with them, than other fathers. Mothers with university education allocate more daily time than other mothers to both childcare and to paid work.     

Independence and effectiveness: Messages from the role of Independent Reviewing Officers in England

This paper draws on research into the role of Independent Reviewing Officers (IROs) in England, exploring the dimensions and challenges of their ‘independence’. IROs are specialist social workers whose function is to review the cases of children in public care and ensure that they have appropriate plans and that these plans are being implemented in a timely manner. IROs are ‘independent’ in the sense that they are not the social worker to whom a child's case is allocated, and do not have line management responsibility for the case, however they are employed by the same local authority. There are detailed regulations and government guidelines on their role, and high expectations, but what does independence mean in this context? The paper draws on a mixed methods study conducted by the authors in 2012–14, which included a survey of 122 files of children in care from four local authorities; interviews with 54 social workers, 54 IROs, 15 parents, and 15 young people; six focus groups; and nationally-distributed questionnaires for IROs (65), social work managers (46) and children's guardians (39). The study found five dimensions of independence: professional, operational, perceived, institutional and effective. The IROs and social workers generally took more nuanced and pragmatic approaches to their inter-professional working than prescribed in the policy guidance or the pronouncements of politicians and judges, seeing this as more likely to be effective. IROs are not, and cannot be, the solution to all the problems that exist in services for children in care, and the other professionals involved should not be seen as necessarily any less capable or committed to the best interests of the children. Rather, the IRO is part of an interactive system of checks and balances which, together, may increase the likelihood that professional judgement will be exercised effectively on the child's behalf.     

Social work and day care: a role looking for a profession

The profession's present role in day care is assessed through a review of the social work literature. This analysis suggests that the profession is not systematically involved enough in child care systems on a local or national basis. The author discusses why this is so, and suggests professional points of access for social workers interested in providing social services in different types of child care. In addition, it is recommended that more policy and programmatic emphases be put on providing social services to family day care homes, the care of children by their relatives, and for centers that serve ethnic minorities and disadvantaged families.I wish to thank Beatrice Saunders and Eleanor Brilliant for their help in writing this article.     

Effects of a Foster Parent Training Program on Young Children’s Attachment Behaviors: Preliminary Evidence from a Randomized Clinical Trial

Young children who enter foster care experience disruptions in care and maltreatment at a point when maintaining attachment relationships is a key, biologically based task. In previous research, we have found that young children experience challenges as they form attachments with new caregivers. They tend to push their new caregivers away, even though such children are especially in need of nurturing care. Further, many caregivers do not respond in nurturing ways when their children are distressed, which we have found is problematic for young children in foster care. We developed an intervention that is designed to help caregivers provide nurturance even when children do not elicit it, and even when it does not come naturally to them. This paper presents preliminary findings of the effectiveness of this intervention on children’s attachment behaviors. Forty-six children were randomly assigned to either the experimental intervention or to an educational intervention. For three consecutive days, attachment behaviors were reported across three distress-eliciting situations. Children whose parents had received the experimental intervention showed significantly less avoidance than children whose parents had received the educational intervention. These preliminary results suggest that the intervention is successful in helping children develop trusting relationships with new caregivers.     

Compassionate,safe and rigorous child protection practice with biological parents of adopted children

There is a worldwide trend towards re‐energizing the use of adoption as a tool of child protection, primarily designed to ensure that children do not languish in care. This paper poses the question: does this trend obscure the rights of relinquishing parents? By inquiring into a specific case, and reflecting on the themes surrounding this practice, the authors suggest that rigorous practice, which attends to the permanency needs of the child, is possible while simultaneously being responsive to the human rights of the biological parents. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Support Group for Families who have Children in Care: an Evaluative Case Study

This article evaluates an attempt to establish a support group for parents and relatives whose children are in care in one health board in Ireland. It uses a qualitative methodology, drawing on a group evaluation session, supplemented by individual interviews with the members of that group. The paper shows that it was successful in so far as it provided members with a forum where they felt accepted, where their rights as parents were validated, their self-esteem enhanced and informal access provided to senior social workers. Finally, the paper suggests ways in which the therapeutic potential of such groups could be enhanced and more needy parents attracted into them.     

Bi-Cultural Socialization and Ethnic Identity in Daughters Adopted from China

Abstract

To varying degrees, parents who adopt children from China attempt to bring Chinese people, language, and culture into daily life as a way to help their adopted children feel proud about their ethnic heritage. Do attempts to provide bi-cultural socialization really influence ethnic identity? And, if so, what are the costs and benefits? In this article we draw on a longitudinal study of families with children adopted from China to describe their pre-teen and teenage daughters' orientations toward Chinese identity. The results indicate that Chinese ethnicity is an important component of adolescent identity for many adoptees, and that the odds of its being important are directly related to bi-cultural socialization influences within and outside of the family. Chinese ethnic identity does not appear to compromise the importance of American identity or closeness with family members who are not of Chinese descent. However, it does have the potential to magnify feelings of loss of birth parents and distress associated with pre-adoption histories in China.     

Long-term care of the disabled elderly: do children increase caregiving by spouses?

Do adult children affect the care elderly parents provide each other? We develop two models in which the anticipated behavior of adult children provides incentives for nondisabled elderly parents to increase care for their disabled spouses. The “demonstration effect” postulates that adult children learn from a parent’s example that family caregiving is appropriate behavior. The “punishment effect” postulates that adult children may punish parents who fail to provide spousal care by not providing future care for the nondisabled spouse if and when necessary. Thus, joint children act as a commitment mechanism, increasing the probability that elderly parents will provide care for their disabled spouses. We argue that stepchildren provide weaker incentives for spousal care because the attachment of a stepchild to a stepparent is likely to be weaker than the attachment of children to parents in a traditional nuclear family. Using data from the HRS, we find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that joint children provide stronger incentives than stepchildren for nondisabled elderly parents to provide care for their disabled spouse.     

The Abused and Neglected Foster Child: Determinants of Emotional Conflict and Oppositional Behavior

Behavioral and emotional problems have been observed in emotionally vulnerable children in foster care under certain circumstances. A common pattern involves the unpredictable appearance of a previously absent or unavailable natural parent. Such an occurrence precipitates the reawakening of the child’s ambivalent feelings toward both natural and foster parents as well as their fears of abandonment. This frequently leads to behavior that is oppositional and difficult to manage. If the foster parents find the child’s behavior unmanageable, and if they are not provided with appropriate professional support during this difficult period, a crisis often follows that precipitates the child’s removal from the foster home. Individual, familial, and systemic contributions to this dilemma are discussed" This article emphasizes the origins and nature of the intrapsychic dilemma faced by these children. Particular emphasis is placed on the manifestations of a conflict of loyalty, in the child, and its relationship to the oppositional behavior of these children in foster care. Additional considerations include the impact of inconsistent parenting, abuse and neglect by the natural parents, the assumption of a parental role by the child and a concomitant renunciation of the child’s dependency needs, as well as an examination of the role of the foster parent’s fantasy of what it will be like to parent a traumatized child.     

The abused and neglected foster child: Determinants of emotional conflict and oppositional behavior

Behavioral and emotional problems have been observed in emotionally vulnerable children in foster care under certain circumstances. A common pattern involves the unpredictable appearance of a previously absent or unavailable natural parent. Such an occurrence precipitates the reawakening of the child's ambivalent feelings toward both natural and foster parents as well as their fears of abandonment. This frequently leads to behavior that is oppositional and difficult to manage. If the foster parents find the child's behavior unmanageable, and if they are not provided with appropriate professional support during this difficult period, a crisis often follows that precipitates the child's removal from the foster home. Individual, familial, and systemic contributions to this dilemma are discussed. This article emphasizes the origins and nature of the intrapsychic dilemma faced by these children. Particular emphasis is placed on the manifestations of a conflict of loyalty, in the child, and its relationship to the oppositional behavior of these children in foster care. Additional considerations include the impact of inconsistent parenting, abuse and neglect by the natural parents, the assumption of a parental role by the child and a concomitant renunciation of the child's dependency needs, as well as an examination of the role of the foster parent's fantasy of what it will be like to parent a traumatized child.     

WORKING TO EXIT POVERTY WHILE CARING FOR CHILDREN'S HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT IN VIETNAM

Since the implementation of economic reforms in 1986, levels of urbanization, industrialization, and women's labour force participation have increased in Vietnam. This article focuses on the experiences of parents in Vietnam and how labour and social conditions affect their ability to work and exit poverty while caring for their children's health and development. We interviewed a sample of 147 parents in Ho Chi Minh City using in-depth, semi-structured questionnaires. Sixty-three percent of parents had faced loss of income or promotions or had difficulty retaining jobs because they had to care for children. Fifty-eight percent of parents lost income while caring for their sick children because they had to take unpaid leave from work to care for their children or because they had to decrease productivity if they were able to continue working. Fifty percent of parents with school-age children experienced barriers to helping with homework, to attending meetings, or to participating in other aspects of their children's education. The aftermath of the Vietnamese – American War affected parents through loss of extended family members, limiting access to a major traditional source of support. The war had affected other parents by preventing them from completing their education, which left them with job choices that offer little or no work benefits. Although Vietnam has made significant progress in providing early childhood care and education and legislating labour laws, working families’ experiences demonstrate the need to ensure that paid leave and work flexibility policies are available and implemented in all work sectors and to expand affordable, quality child care in order to help low-income working parents in Vietnam meet work demands and exit poverty while meeting their children's needs.     

Promoting Children's Welfare by Inter‐professional Practice and Learning in Social Work and Primary Care

Social work in the United Kingdom is an activity that benefits from, and often requires, co‐operation between different staff and across different professions. How this is to be achieved has been a central dilemma for practice and policy for many years. Primary care health services often play a key role. New policy and practice developments are designed to promote inter‐professional working with children, where research has shown significant problems in the community‐based health care of looked after children, children leaving care, and children at serious risk. There is, however, little evidence from research that supports current developments in inter‐professional practice; analysis of the particular nature of the inter‐professional problems is lacking, as are therefore the relevant inter‐professional solutions. A framework for better analysis, linked to developments in practice‐based research, one that would yield significant improvements for children's welfare, is presented here.     

A study of 185 foster children 5 years after placement

This study's findings are similar to those of other studies. The majority of children who enter foster care return to their families within a relatively short time. A small group, because of the severity of their problems or those of their parents, need extended care. This group of children, over time, form the hard core of foster care placements. Our findings also bear out those of others that the foster care experience is a relatively stable one for children, with the majority having one or two placements while in care. Clearly, the need for and use of foster care is frequently misunderstood. The methodology used in research studies has gradually improved, adding to objective knowledge about this aspect of the child welfare system. Longitudinal studies, such as Jenkins [1967], Fanshel and Shinn [1978], and the one reported here, point to the need for deeper, more refined studies that examine not only the going and coming of children in foster care but the professional service component that can make foster care a constructive experience for children placed in it. Meyer issued an intelligent and timely challenge to the field of child welfare to give up "debates about permanency" and, if it is not too late, to "retrieve child welfare from the control of lawyers and MBAs" [1984: 499]. If the profession of social work can more clearly define the components of foster care service and can differentiate among the children needing care those who can best be served by this type of placement, then the field will be well on its way to offering an appropriate service for certain children. Attempts to denigrate a potentially helpful service for needy children simply destroy one aspect of a complex system. A wide range of services is necessary to serve all children appropriately. Without this kind of continuum, children are more likely to receive inappropriate services and to be placed at risk.     

Communicating with parents

It is difficult to help a child whose parents are unavailable to the professional working with the child. Parents whose children have problems tend to be fearful of being judged and criticized. Anger or expressions of guilt may mask their fears about their own inadequacies and problems. All parents need to be listened to and understood before professionals can help the children. Communicating this understanding to the parents requires more than works. Listening, enabling parents to talk and talking with parents often needs to be supplemented by actions concrete services and even by play to enable the parents to trust enough to want to learn how to be better parents. Foster parents must also be drawn into a cooperative effort to help children in their care.This is an excerpt from the bookWork With Children to be published by Human Sciences Press in February 1979. This selection deals with communicating with parents, for until that is accomplished, there is no chance to communicate with children.