All children are dependent on others for their care and well-being, but children in foster care are uniquely dependent upon governments and their agencies and services. These children have complex problems rooted in family, social, and environmental conditions, and often need a broad range of health, mental health, and developmental services to overcome the effects of abuse and neglect. This guide will help purchasers of managed health care understand the complex health care and social service needs of children in foster care.
This up-to-date and comprehensive resource by leaders in child welfare is the first book to reflect the impact of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997. The text serves as a single-source reference for a wide array of professionals who work in children, youth, and family services in the United States-policymakers, social workers, psychologists, educators, attorneys, guardians ad litem, and family court judges& mdash;and as a text for students of child welfare practice and policy. Features include: * Organized around ASFA's guiding principles of well-being, safety, and permanency * Focus on evidence-based "best practices" * Case examples integrated throughout * First book to include data from the first round of National Child and Family Service Reviews Topics discussed include the latest on prevention of child abuse and neglect and child protective services; risk and resilience in child development; engaging families; connecting families with public and community resources; health and mental health care needs of children and adolescents; domestic violence; substance abuse in the family; family preservation services; family support services and the integration of family-centered practices in child welfare; gay and lesbian adolescents and their families; children with disabilities; and runaway and homeless youth. The contributors also explore issues pertaining to foster care and adoption, including a focus on permanency planning for children and youth and the need to provide services that are individualized and culturally and spiritually responsive to clients. A review of salient systemic issues in the field of children, youth, and family services completes this collection.
In recent years, state Medicaid programs have implemented significant change and innovation in delivering health and behavioral health services. Prepaid capitated financing and the provider networks created by Medicaid managed care expansions have altered systems of medical and mental/behavioral health. Most children in foster care receive services from the same community-based providers that serve low-income and publicly insured children and that are affected by managed care transitions. Most of these new prepaid delivery models have not been fully evaluated to determine their impact on access to services for children during their entry to foster care, placement, and exit from protective custody. Key health care financing issues for foster children continue to include Medicaid eligibility, enrollment and retention procedures, benefit limitations, payment mechanisms, transition procedures upon return to the biological family, use of managed care, and payment adequacy, among others. This brief presents a national overview of financing policies and their impact from the perspectives of state Medicaid, child welfare, and mental health agencies by evaluating Medicaid policies on eligibility, enrollment, retention, and coverage of physical as well as dental, developmental, and mental health services for children in foster care and comparing the perspectives of state child welfare agencies and state Medicaid programs on eligibility and coverage. The authors conclude that there are gaps in coverage, services that are not being reimbursed, and other administrative problems that result in incomplete coverage. Moreover, child welfare and mental health agencies charged with assuring that children in foster care receive appropriate, timely, and high quality health services report difficulty paying for needed services. This shows that states may be having difficulty implementing the ASFA requirement to promote children's well-being. Key recommendations and action steps are discussed. (Contains 4 figures, 2 tables, and 2 endnotes.).
Sponsored by the Society of Pediatric Psychology, this handbook is recognized as the definitive reference in the field. In concise, peer-reviewed chapters, leading authorities comprehensively examine links between psychological and medical issues from infancy through adolescence. Psychosocial aspects of specific medical problems and developmental, emotional, and behavioral disorders are reviewed. The volume showcases evidence-based approaches to intervention and prevention. It describes innovative ways that professionals can promote positive health behaviors; help children and families cope with medical conditions and their treatment; and collaborate across disciplines to deliver effective clinical services in primary care, mental health, and school settings.
CWLA asked state child welfare commissioners to report what they considered to be barriers to providing good health care to the children in their custody and what they thought could be done to make things better. This publication reviews and analyzes the responses to this survey.
Foster and adoptive parents are challenged by society to raise the child with extraordinary emotional and behavioral problems, the child marked by his past, the child whose future without help looks grim. In effect, we ask these parents to not only "Raise Cain" but to raise him better. But if we ask foster and adoptive parents to raise society's abused and neglected youngsters, our system (legal, welfare, and mental health) must better attend to the best interests of its children and of those who care for Cain. Raising Cain challenges failings in the legal, welfare, and mental health system that undermine the best interests of foster and adoptive children. It protests, confronts, and "Raises Cain" about basic, but reparable flaws in our present system of care.
Family foster care is supposed to provide temporary protection and nurturing for children experiencing maltreatment. Although it has long been a critical service for millions of children in the United States, the increased attention given to this service in the last two decades has focused more on its inability to achieve its intended outcomes than on its successes. However, as social and political trends and new legislation reshape child welfare, policymakers and service providers continue to offer innovative policy and practice options for this child welfare service. Though use of the service has changed, family foster care remains important. Responding to a widespread sense of the "drifting" of children in care, Congress passed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980. This legislation became a key factor shaping the current status of family foster care. Its goal was to reduce reliance on out-of-home care and encourage use of preventive and reunification services; it also mandated that agencies engage in planning efforts for permanent solutions for foster children. Yet, despite federal mandates and funding, the child welfare system has continued to struggle to provide the level of services needed for children to reduce the amount of time children remain in temporary foster care. The latest response to these problems, the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, established unequivocally that safety, permanency, and well-being were national goals for children in the child welfare system. To comply with the law, public and private agencies are required to initiate significant program and practice changes in the coming years to improve permanency outcomes and child well-being in family foster care. The central theme of the volume is accountability for outcomes, certainly a current driving force in child welfare as well as in other public and private service fields. This volume will be of interest to all concerned with the social welfare of children and families at the end of the twentieth century. Kathy Barbell is director of Foster Care of the Child Welfare League of America, Washington, DC. Lois Wright is assistant dean at the College of Social Work, University of South Carolina, Columbia.
Work first. That is the core idea behind the 1996 welfare reform legislation. It sounds appealing, but according to Making the Work-Based Safety Net Work Better, it collides with an exceptionally difficult reality. The degree to which work provides a way out of poverty depends greatly on the ability of low-skilled people to maintain stable employment and make progress toward an income that provides an adequate standard of living. This forward-looking volume examines eight areas of the safety net where families are falling through and describes how current policies and institutions could evolve to enhance the self-sufficiency of low-income families. David Neumark analyzes a range of labor market policies and finds overwhelming evidence that the minimum wage is ineffective in promoting self-sufficiency. Neumark suggests the Earned Income Tax Credit is a much more promising policy to boost employment among single mothers and family incomes. Greg Duncan, Lisa Gennetian, and Pamela Morris find no evidence that encouraging parents to work leads to better parenting, improved psychological health, or more positive role models for children. Instead, the connection between parental work and child achievement is linked to parents' improved access to quality child care. Rebecca Blank and Brian Kovak document an alarming increase in the number of single mothers who receive neither wages nor public assistance and who are significantly more likely to suffer from medical problems of their own or of a child. Time caps and work hour requirements embedded in benefits policies leave some mothers unable to work and ineligible for cash benefits. Marcia Meyers and Janet Gornick identify another gap: low-income families tend to lose financial support and health coverage long before they earn enough to access employer-based benefits and tax provisions. They propose building "institutional bridges" that minimize discontinuities associated with changes in employment, earnings, or family structure. Steven Raphael addresses a particularly troubling weakness of the work-based safety net—its inadequate provision for the large number of individuals who are or were incarcerated in the United States. He offers tractable suggestions for policy changes that could ease their transition back into non-institutionalized society and the labor market. Making the Work-Based Safety Net Work Better shows that the "work first" approach alone isn't working and suggests specific ways the social welfare system might be modified to produce greater gains for vulnerable families.
Health Care Administration: Managing Organized Delivery Systems, Fifth Edition provides graduate and pre-professional students with a comprehensive, detailed overview of the numerous facets of the modern healthcare system, focusing on functions and operations at both the corporate and hospital level. The Fifth Edition of this authoritative text comprises several new subjects, including new chapters on patient safety and ambulatory care center design and planning. Important Notice: The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images or content found in the physical edition.
