For anyone who has thought about foster care, it can be enlightening to learn more about the history of what foster care looks like in the USA and what social workers have to do with it. So without further ado, here is a brief history of foster care and their social workers in the US.
While adopting orphaned children is not a new thing, formal adoption in the United States, actually stems all the way back to the 1850’s. (CWIG, 2017) During that time, a law was first passed in Massachusetts which “recognized adoption as a social and legal process based on child welfare rather than adult interests” (CWIG, 2017). This meant that the judges in that state would ensure that adopted children had good placements that were primarily in their best interests. However in most other states, adoption was often done for the parents’ self interest. (TAHP, 2012) Rather than placing children in families that fit their needs, children were placed with parents that wanted a certain look, blonde, or brown-eyed, or were placed because the parents wanted a babysitter or farmhand.
1850 was also the time of Orphan Trains, this program was created by Reverend Charles Loring Brace, in order to relocate “vagrant kids from the streets of New York to the Midwest to start working the land” (NPR, 2013). Reverend Charles is also the founder of the non-profit New York Children’s Aid Society. Now, he used the Orphan Trains to take children from poverty stricken Catholics and transferred them to “Anglo-Protestant farming families in small towns” in order to convert them to protestants (TAHP, 2012). This program was successful in getting children off the streets and giving them a safe place to sleep and putting food in their bellies. They also had the advantage of new parents and a place they belonged, which was more than they had in New York.
However there were distinct disadvantages, as these adopted children were often just used for labor, and were treated as servants. Also, after the children were sent to their new homes in the Midwest there was often no one to check up on them and ensure they were being treated with adequate care. Sadly this means that they may have been abused or mistreated by their new families and that there was no one around to advocate for their best interests and ensure better treatment. (NPR, 2013)
Initially in many states the government was not involved in adoption affairs, and therefore did not regulate it in any way. However, it finally intervened in 1868, when Massachusetts decided to house more children by paying families to let orphans live in their homes. They even sent agents to follow up with the children and see how they were fairing in their new homes, so that they could ensure good quality of care. (TAHP, 2012) Then a few years later, the New York State Charities Aid Association followed suit by creating a child-placement program that eventually led to what we now know as foster care. (TAHP, 2012) A distinct advantage over the orphan trains was that putting children in homes was more regulated and checked up on, so it was less likely for children to slip through the cracks and be trapped in unsafe and unstable homes.
However in New York, the government was not able to house nearly as many children as the orphan trains did. They neither had the manpower nor the funds to help every single orphan and so, in fifty years they only found homes for 3300 children, in contrast to the 250,000 children the orphan trains housed over the span of seventy years. (TAHP, 2012) This spurred a need for policy change and for more funding from the government.
The services provided to children without a safe home have changed drastically over time as funding has increased. In 1912 the Children’s Bureau was created by the US government and they began to work on monitoring foster placements and setting “minimum standards” for adoption (TAHP, 2012). They also worked hand in hand with the Child Welfare League of America to monitor their process of placing children in foster care and also monitored adoptions. Then in 1921, the Child Welfare League of America created a “Constitution that defined standard-setting as one of the organization’s core purposes” and so the American Association of Social Workers was founded (TAHP, 2012). This led to the practice of having qualified social workers monitor adoptions, foster placements by setting professional social worker standards, and initially “served as a placement bureau for social workers” (Social Welfare Library, 2011).
In 1955, this organization merged with seven similar organizations that formed the National Association of Social Workers. And this agency is still monitoring social workers today, as they have created the NASW Code of Ethics to specifically ensure that social workers are held to the highest standards and are treating both children and clients with the utmost respect and dignity they deserve. This agency spans the globe and promotes quality assurance by enhancing the professional growth and development of its members, creating and maintaining professional industry standards, and advancing social policies throughout the world. (Social Welfare Library, 2011)
And so this organization monitors the practice of foster care social workers as they work for either governmental, or non governmental agencies to place foster children in beneficial homes for the purposes of either reunification with their birth family/relatives or adoption from approved foster families. Of course there are still flaws in the system, every state has their own process and certification for approving parents who want to become foster parents, and unfortunately not all people who become approved end up being good people. But if you are interested in being a foster parent, don’t let that scare you, there is a huge deficit of good foster parents (or Resource Parents as they are now called in California) and there are hundreds of children still waiting for safe and loving homes.
Sources:
Child Welfare Information Gateway. 2017. History of Adoption Practices in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S.; Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Bureau. https://www.childwelfare.gov
NPR. 2013. After Tragedy, Young Girl Shipped West On ‘Orphan Train. NPR. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/176920218.
Social Welfare Library. 2011. National Association Of Social Workers. https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/organizations/National-Association-of-Social-Workers/
The Adoption History Project. 2012. Timeline of Adoption History. Adoption history. Eugene, Oregon. Department of History, University of Oregon. https://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adoption/timeline.html
Photo Credit: The Sioux City Journal