Social_Pollicy

Unit 5 Project Janice Smith CJ102-01 Professor Kowaluk September 6, 2011 When attempting to separate children from their family, there are a number of moral and ethical issues to consider. A person whose profession deals with human relationships and emotional issues must be competent to make these decisions and also be objective. They must also be equipped to think about moral and ethical issues when it involves family relationships. They need to take into consideration the well- being of the children and the emotional impact removing children from a home will have on the family as well as the child. The rights of the parents and/or guardians are also an important ethical issue. There are four stages of working with children at risk. They are recognizing the problem, evaluating the situation, protecting the child and future planning for the child. There are not enough foster parents who want to take in newborn infants and special needs children. This results in children being placed in group homes or being separated from their brothers or sisters. It also leads to some children being moved from one home to another. These factors take an emotional toll on children which leads to behavioral problems and doing poorly in school. It also takes an emotional toll on the parents or guardians. Removing children from a home also puts a financial burden on the county and state. Putting children in foster care costs money. Due to the emotional and financial burdens this policy would cause, I would have to disagree with the policy of removing children from homes that have more than one or more domestic violence, child abuse, or drug or alcohol related offenses. Removing a child from a home would cause an emotional breakdown of the family structure. The emotional development of a child can be compromised if they are placed in a different environment. “In fact, children in foster homes are more likely to develop behavioral, educational, and emotional problems than children who are raised by abusive and high-risk parents”. (Bass et al., 2004; Harden, 2004; Kortenkamp, K., and Ehrle, 2002; Lawrence et al. 2006 NSCAW 2004) There are positive and negative impacts on children and their families when they are put into the welfare system. The positive effects are that the family would get counseling, drug and alcohol rehabilitation and access to job services. They would also get anger management counseling and parenting classes. This would help in reducing or even eliminate the family issues from occurring again. If a family could not afford to get these services before, they could get them now. It would also help in the parents or guardians getting back their children. When families are kept together, it enables the child to feel secure and bond with the family. This allows the child to be in a better emotional state. Children who are able to stay with their family are not as likely to develop behavioral problems as they would if they were taken from their family. There are more negative impacts than positive ones. Children at a young age are more emotionally vulnerable. Placing a child in foster care or a group home will damage their emotional development. Moving a child from one home to another will cause the child to have attachment issues as a child as well as later in life. They may never be able to establish close relationships or possibly form abnormal attachments. They may feel insecure, develop mental health issues and have behavior problems. These issues may lead to criminal activity. They might also turn to drugs or alcohol themselves. This would cause another burden on the social service system. Social learning theory is “where people learn from one another through observation, imitation and modeling.” (Freeman, 1997) It was a theory developed by Albert Bandura. He believed that aggression is learned through a process of behavior modeling. Bandura argued that people, especially children, learned aggressive behavior by observing others. He argued that aggression in children is influenced by family members, peers, media and environment. According to Bandura social learning is a process of four stages. These stages are attention, retention, reproduction and motivation. A person has to pay attention to what they are observing. They then have to remember what they have observed. They reproduce this behavior and must have a good reason to imitate this behavior. The Department of Job and Family Services misinterpreted and misapplied this theory. They assumed that everyone mimics others behavior. Children can tell the difference between what is acceptable and what is not acceptable behavior. A parent might have driven drunk and gotten arrested. Another parent may have been caught with drugs. Does this mean they should have their children taken away. I do not believe so. If their child or children were not with them, then they should be allowed to stay in the home. Some parents just make dumb mistakes. That doesn’t mean that they are horrible parents. They should have to go through counseling or parenting classes but that’s about it. The social learning theory does not apply in this situation. Removing children from their families is wrong. The social service system is already underfunded. There is a shortage of staff. There have been many stories in the past few years about children being ending up hurt or dead because calls to social services were ignored or the social worker didn’t have the time to investigate the allegations. There have also been situations where foster parents have abused their foster children. Some have even died because of this abuse. Unless the child is in a situation where they are being neglected or physically abused, they should stay with their family. Reference Page www.learning-theories.com/social-learning theory.bandura.html www.experiment –resources.com www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/public