My topic is probably going to be favoring foster children under the age of five being maintained in the same foster home for a minimum of three years consecutively unless they are returned to the care of their biological parents because it provides a more stable environment for the child, a better prognosis for development of the child, and provides the best chance of minimizing or preventing the long-term problems associated with the child developing reactive attachment disorder. Yeah, that is a mouthful. It is a very fancy way of saying that mommy and baby never bonded properly and if someone doesn't figure out how to get that baby to bond properly before it is too late, the poor kid is going to have a really tough life.
I am not sold on the first point, however. I think it is weak because the second point also encompasses stability. The reason I think that stability needs to stand on its own is because children in the system are jerked all around, all the time. One day you live here and tomorrow you live there. These kids have little says in where they live. It has a lot to do with why they act out at times. In our PS MAPP class they pointed that it is good to give these kids choices. Choices make them feel like they actually have some control over something in their life.
I thought about making resource parenting my topic but I do not think that it is controversial enough. The only people who would disagree with resource parenting are people who abuse their kids. What they have to say really does not matter because the state is going to put the kids in to care anyway. What the parents do not seem to realize is that the state is going to try to help them get their kids back.
The state will try to get the parents to comply with whatever classes, skills or housing requirements are necessary in order to reunify the family. The parents never feel that way, btw. CPS is the enemy. CPS and the resource parent stole their kid. And the CASA is the spy. Got the picture?
The need for CASA workers is a great topic too. Child advocacy is a very new vocation. It still disgusts me that there was no legal precedent for for assault of a child in there own home in law in the late 1800s. I still cannot believe the legal precedent used try the first child abuse case was under the animal cruelty laws. That just soooo wrong!
As it stands, there were no child abuse law in Arizona until 1972! Can you imagine? That is why I said child advocacy is still in its infancy. CASA workers and Guardians ad Litem are relatively new. Judge David Soukup came up with the idea for the CASA program in 1977 (Piraino, 2007).
Okay, so while I am looking up citations, the first ever child abuse case was the case of Mary Ellen back in 1874. I found a write up in the NY Times about it back in 2009. Very good article. I'm going to save it here. This way I'll have it, if I want it tomorrow.
I have some great articles on Sage but I can't save the links here because no one but me would be able to access them anyway. My key words are reactive attachment disorder and attachment disorder treatment. Basically, they are saying that we know a lot about the babies and the toddlers; what we don't know is how the juveniles are doing once they have the disorder. Additionally, there is no empirical data to look at so studies need to be done so that treatment plans can be developed, but Behavioral Management Therapy looks like it might work well from at least one individual case study I viewed. I suspect that even though it will work well for some, it will fail for others. We are all different as night and day.
They used a reward based system on the test subject. She was all about the reward but not every little girl or boy is going to respond that way because I don't. I am all about the process, not the endpoint.
I really would make a good therapist/analyst.
Okay, that's all I've got for now.
Goodnight. I'll see where I am in the morning.
Piraino, M. (2007). Looking Back --To the Future. The Connection, Spring 2007, 1. Retrieved from: http://nc.casaforchildren.org/files/public/site/publications/theconnection/Connection_Spring2007.pdf
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