Family and Child Welfare

Family and Child Welfare 3 (3+0)

Lesson 27 : Faster Care system

Foster home care: a social system

Foster home care is a system with its own set of component parts and relationships among these parts. The foster child, the biological parents, the foster parents, the biological siblings, the foster siblings, the agency social worker, the court-appointed guardian -each party is an in­tegral element of the whole and is bound to­gether with others and interacts with others in the foster care system. As a system, foster home care is in continuous change and no part of it can be affected without affecting the whole.

The foster care system has an environment or set of external influences. These influences include such institutions or forces as the placing agency's supervisory and administrative structure and policies, the court, the child's school, the agency that applies mandatory stan­dards to the foster home for purposes of licens­ing, individual community child care norms and treatment agencies within the community.