Question 1
From the article “Dynamics that Contribute to Racial Disproportionality and Disparity: Perspectives From Child Welfare Professional, Communities, and Families” I was intrigued by theme five: inability of many child welfare professionals to relate with clients. Indeed, these professionals’ main role is to advance the welfare of at-danger children, thus their inability to relate with their clients hinders excellent performance, which is a serious matter given the sensitivity of their work. It also leads to the occurrences of three other themes discussed by the participants, namely; the negative perception of client’s behaviour, mistrust and holding on to the past. These themes potray that child welfare professionals’ inability to relate with clients is a major factor that increases racial discriminations experienced in the system, especially against non-white Americans. Furthermore, it adversely influeces the credibility of child welfare system.As a result, the public views the system as rigid and punitive based on racial considerations.
Question 2
The article “African American Perspectives on Racial Disparities in Child Removals” reveals parental trauma that child welfare services overlooks. The impact of a parent’s trauma influences the upbringing method the parent uses to raise their children, thus before instigating foster care services, child welfare professionals should consider traumas previously experienced by parents. For instance, the child care professional can make referrals to culturally competent family therapists or programs geared towards domestic violence prevention, and substance abuse rehabilitation. Furthermore, next of kin (family) can be identified and involved in the decision-making process to help parents overcome the trauma. I agree with the participants discussions that just as children, parents also become traumatized when they are separated from their children, thus the background checks on parents involved in child intervention system should be used to help them become better role models to their children. Once these interventions have failed, then the parents and children can be separated, but mean of reuniting them be explored gradually. Moreover, the system should be amended such that parents are involved in the process of deciding their children’s foster homes. This way biological parents and the foster parents can interact and know how best to raise children with minimal interference, and the parents can protect their children from further abuse.
Question 3
Of the remaining three articles, I was interested in the article “Working With African American Families” because it gives directions that child welfare professionals can take to provide optimal services to their clients. While the article focuses on African Americans, I believe that the stipulated measures can apply to any other client irrespective of a client’s color. The article also emphasizes that case workers need to present their clients’ cases focusing on the clients’ skills rather than the previous deficit-problem-based method of interacting with clients. In doing so, a case worker is able to understand a client better, therefore, recommend culture-congruent services for each client. The approach recommended in the article can also be applied to the problems addressed in the other two articles; “Rural Child Welfare” and “The Cultural Guide for Latino Families.” Both the two articles recommended that understanding a clients background is essential in improving the services offered. Moreover, the article notes that child welfare institutions have to provide training to caseworkers to handle each case independently, and not generalize procedures. In doing so, a healthy professional-client relationship will be established, and occurrences of mistrust eliminated.
The question does not ask you to explain what they should do. the question is what is interesting and WHY it is interesting. So delete this and give another reason WHY the theme is interesting.