The Low Turnout For Child Welfare Clinic For Children Essay

What is a Child Welfare Social Worker?
Child welfare social workers protect vulnerable youth and help disadvantaged families meet the needs of their children. As the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) External link explains, they “specialize in building upon the strengths within a family and their community to help provide a safe and loving environment for their children,” but also “intervene to protect children from harm” when necessary.The Low Turnout For Child Welfare Clinic For Children Essay

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Due to the complexity and emotionally charged nature of their work (separating families by necessity, sometimes permanently, and balancing the at times conflicting interests of the child, his/her parents, and the child dependency court), child welfare social workers may find their daily responsibilities to be challenging. Despite these difficulties, professionals in this field often find their ability to provide compassionate support to parents while protecting children in need to be rewarding due to its profound impact, on an individual and societal level.The Low Turnout For Child Welfare Clinic For Children Essay

Job Description at a Glance
Some of the child welfare social worker’s core responsibilities External link include responding to cases of child abuse and neglect; removing children from home settings that are dangerous or do not meet certain standards; working with children and their families on a reunification plan in collaboration with child dependency courts; helping parents meet the needs of their children by connecting them with resources and helping them navigate programs, therapy and advising; and arranging for short- and long-term care of children whose families cannot take care of them.The Low Turnout For Child Welfare Clinic For Children Essay

Education Requirements
While child welfare social workers can work in entry level agency positions after receiving their bachelor’s in social work, many employers prefer individuals who wish to progress to higher or more involved roles to have a master’s in social work (MSW) from a CSWE-accredited institution, with a focus on children and families, according to the NASW Standards for Social Work Practice in Child Welfare (PDF, 138 KB) External link . During their MSW program, students interested in child welfare should seek internships in relevant settings (such as a family welfare agency), and take courses in clinical social work methods, family dynamics, child development, poverty, and/or disadvantaged populations. Social workers who want graduate level training for child welfare social work positions should explore state-funded scholarships for MSW students focusing on child welfare.The Low Turnout For Child Welfare Clinic For Children Essay

This collection of brief issue papers describes 15 major problem areas facing American children and families and summarizes the state of knowledge about the scope of the problems, trends, current government program expenditures, costs per case, the effectiveness of current intervention strategies and public attitudes about the problem areas. These papers are not intended to be comprehensive reviews of the current knowledge about the problems (which could fill volumes for some of the areas), but are broad brush attempts to encapsulate policy-useful information about problems and solutions in a consistent and integrative fashion. In some cases, vast areas of knowledge have been greatly summarized and, in others, there is little readily available data. One useful product of this effort is to highlight key information gaps.The Low Turnout For Child Welfare Clinic For Children Essay

This review focuses primarily on social and health service needs and programs affecting children and their families. Topics include:

Child health (including infant mortality, children without health care coverage, pediatric/adolescent AIDS and mental health problems);
Adolescents in trouble (including adolescent pregnancy, substance abuse, runaway youth, and educational/employment deficits);
Child welfare services (including child abuse/neglect; adequacy of foster care services; and adequacy of adoption services);
Lack of child care;
Lack of early childhood education;The Low Turnout For Child Welfare Clinic For Children Essay
Lack of child support; and
Homelessness.
ASPE contracted with SysteMetrics/McGraw-Hill to develop these issue papers. ASPE staff determined the problems areas which would be included in the review and approved the outline to be followed for each issue paper. It was beyond the scope of the review to focus on the enormous problem areas of child/family poverty and general education. There are other sound reviews of these areas available (e.g., Ellwood, 1988; Committee on Ways and Means, 1985; Committee for Economic Development, 1985). Nonetheless, it is clearly apparent that the boundaries of problems and solutions described here are profoundly shaped by the income and educational resources and opportunities available to the nation’s children and families.

CLASSES OF PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS
At an abstract level, the problems which children and families face can be divided into three basic categories:The Low Turnout For Child Welfare Clinic For Children Essay

Problems which threaten lives,
Problems which create severe social harm, which, while not necessarily life-threatening, hurt children and endanger their health or welfare in serious and unacceptable ways, and
Problems which endanger economic productivity, which impair the ability of children to become productive members of society or which cause current unnecessary social costs.
These are all important types of problems, but they vary in terms of the immediacy and severity of their impacts. While categories were not mutually exclusive, most problems tended to fit primarily in one category, as shown in Exhibit 1. The major areas of overlap occurred for problems causing mental or psychological stress for children which, on the basis of research, appear to carry over into adult years with related social problems (e.g., lower incomes, family distress, etc.). As emphasized in the Adolescents in Trouble paper, these problems are not independent. Many are interrelated and often cluster among certain groups, such as low-income minority children living in inner cities.

EXHIBIT 1. Categories of Social and Health Problems Affecting American Children, Youth and Families
Problems Which Can Threaten Lives
Infant/child mortality
Pediatric/adolescent AIDS
Child abuse (some)
Substance abuse (direct and indirect through violence)The Low Turnout For Child Welfare Clinic For Children Essay
Problems Which Can Create Severe Social Harm
Adolescent pregnancy
Substance abuse
Child abuse/neglect
Homelessness
Mental health problems
Adequacy of foster care services
Adequacy of adoption services
Children without health care coverage
Runaway youth
Problems Which Can Endanger Productivity
Educational/employment deficits
Lack of early childhood education
Lack of child support
Lack of child care
Adolescent pregnancy
Substance abuse
Solutions have two general categories:

Preventive interventions, which try to identify and resolve problems at an early stage before they have more serious consequences, and
Treatment services, which try to resolve or treat problems which have already occurred.The Low Turnout For Child Welfare Clinic For Children Essay
Again, there is no clear line between these two in some cases. For example, while child welfare services may find children who have already been abused or neglected, they seek to provide counseling to help tie current circumstances and also strive to prevent future incidents. It would be better to prevent problems before they occur, if possible. It is socially desirable to avoid the pain or harm inherent in these problems, and prevention efforts are often less expensive than remedial actions. However, often prevention is not possible because we lack effective preventive strategies, because we lack the ability to identify potential problems, or because prevention may cause other problems, such as high societal intrusion into family life and privacy. Thus, treatment services are the primary tools of most public programs. Clearly, future efforts must focus more on developing and implementing better problem identification and prevention programs.

SIZE OF PROBLEMS, CURRENT SERVICE RENDERED AND COSTS
Exhibit 2 summarizes selected data from each of the issue papers regarding number of people needing services; the number of people currently receiving services; current government expenditures per year; and cost per case. The definitions and data sources differ a little for each problem and are discussed in more depth in each of the attached issue papers. The numbers and costs are not completely comparable because of definitional discrepancies which are not readily resolved. However, they indicate the approximate size of the problem and costs which are involved in each type of problem. Data presented are usually based on statistics for relatively recent years (e.g., 1986 to 1988). When older data are used, these are noted. The issue papers also provide, where data are available, rough estimates of the cost to close the gap, i.e., to provide services to those currently unserved. These estimates are quite rough, since in many cases data are lacking or weak. Further, no specific attempt was made to outline specific proposals for serving the unserved. The estimates show the rough magnitude of costs for new services, but should not be considered definitive estimates of specific proposals.The Low Turnout For Child Welfare Clinic For Children Essay

Ranked on the basis of the size of the population potentially needing services, the largest problems are adolescent pregnancy and substance abuse, since virtually all children or adolescents are appropriate targets for prevention efforts. Compensatory education needs are next, based on size. A few million children lack adequate child support, early childhood education, health insurance and mental health services. However, size is certainly not the only indicator of need. Although relatively few children or adolescents have AIDS, the fatal nature of HIV infection makes it a major problem. Similarly, the number of women lacking any or adequate prenatal care is not extremely high, but the seriousness of infant mortality is obvious. The Low Turnout For Child Welfare Clinic For Children Essay