Well, not much to report on the knitting front. I am still working on the candle flame shawl for my mom. I sure hope she will like it. I will have to see if she will have my pops take a pic of it and then mail that to me as I no longer have a didgital camera.
Hope to change that soon as I am now working for the State of Oregon in the Child Welfare department. I do relative searches for kids in foster care. The state would rather place the kids with family than strangers as it makes it easier on the kidlets.
Yes, that’s part of the reason.
The other part is that it costs the state less money to put children in kinship care.
The United States has indeed experienced a “pendulum swing” away from residential placements. As the number of children needing placements has risen, the number of foster parents has decreased.
Kinship care is the new trend, not just in your state, but across the nation – despite the lack of substantial research investigating the outcomes of kinship care.
Here is what should happen:
1.) Kinship care should take place if (and only if) that placement is considered to the best option for the child.
2.) Kinship care providers and children should receive full access to the same supportive services that they would receive if they were in mainstream foster care
3.) Training, accreditation and accountability of relative caregivers should be required, similar to that of licensed foster parents
Kinship care providers receive less training, less supervision, less support and fewer services than foster parents.
As a former foster child and current child advocate, I find that unacceptable,
Lisa
http://www.sunshinegirlonarainyday.com
http://sunshinegirlonarainyday.blogspot.com/
Lisa,
Here in my state, the relatives receive the same training, more supervisio, (for fear that they might return the children to the parents), the same support financially, and the same if not more services than the “unknown” foster parents receive.
We want to make sure that the kids stay in their families so we make sure that their relatives are taken care of the same as the non-relative fosters.
Many things in foster care are betond unacceptable in my eyes, especially having been in foster care myself. I am constantly providing suggestions on how to improve or change a variety of things about foster care. Sometimes I believe I am actually heard along with the many others who do the same.
Julie