Rebecca L. Hegar

Kinship Foster Care: Policy, Practice, and Research

Kinship Foster Care: Policy, Practice, and Research assembles the thinking and research of experts from several professional fields concerning what has become the fastest growing type of substitute care for children by the state. The editors have contributed the initial and concluding chapters of the book, and the lead chapter in each of its three sections.

Kinship Care and Foster Care: A Comparison of Characteristics and Outcomes

The increase in children entering foster care, together with a range of other political, economic, and social factors, has helped fuel the newest phenomenon in the child welfare system–a substantial proportion of children in formal kinship care. Kinship care is defined as out-of-home placement with relatives of children who are in the custody of state and local child welfare agencies. The authors present a review of previous research and report on a study that examined differences and similarities between kinship and traditional foster care in Baltimore County, Maryland, a suburban county that surrounds the city of Baltimore. This study supports many earlier conclusions concerning kinship care, such as children remain in care longer, caregivers are primarily African American, and services provided by kin are less extensive than those provided by traditional foster parents.

Sibling Relationships and Separations: Implications for Child Placement

The implications of sibling relationships and separations have not been emphasized in child placement practice and research. However, the sibling bonds of foster children can be understood in light of the multidisciplinary literature concerning rivalry, incest, family therapy, adult siblings, and siblings from poor and disempowered families and by comparisons of the relationship between siblings and unrelated peers. This literature, along with the limited number of studies of brothers and sisters in foster care, suggests that sibling ties are highly important to many foster children. This article concludes that the foster care population is composed of family groups of children whose bonds deserve greater recognition.

Disposition of child physical abuse reports: Review of the literature and test of a predictive model

Abstract Child protection programs have responded to the problem of insufficient staff to manage the influx of maltreatment reports through screening and triage mechanisms. Despite widespread implementation of such procedures, few studies have focused on developing empirical models that might help case-workers make these decisions. While the models that have been developed to date are superior to caseworker judgment for identifying report substantiation status, their predictive efficiency is not sufficient to warrant use. In this study, ordinal probit analysis was used to develop models to predict the disposition of physical abuse reports for 1447 families made to the public child protection program of a large eastern city using independent variables from four domains and an ordinal level dependent variable that indexed the intake caseworkers confidence that physical abuse had occurred. Analyses revealed that the best performing model involved the dichotomized dependent variable of ruled out and uncertain vs. indicated and confirmed.

Empowerment-based Practice with Children

This article provides an overview of historical shifts in thought concerning the status and rights of children and discusses the implications of these competing views of childhood for social work practice. A beginning definition of empowerment-based practice is offered that draws from the concepts of locus of responsibility and locus of control. Based on this definition, several principles for empowerment-based practice with children are proposed. Examples drawn from child welfare practice illustrate the application of these principles.

Factors Predicting Severity of Physical Child Abuse Injury A Review of the Literature

This article reviews the research literature about predictors of severe and fatal physical child abuse, an important question for the design of risk assessment instruments for use at child welfare intake. Of various factors relating to the victim, the perpetrator, and the report of child abuse, the only one found in this review of the literature to relate consistently to severity of injury is the age of the child. All other questions concerning prediction of injury severity have yet to be answered satisfactorily. In conclusion, design suggestions for future studies of injury severity are presented.

Parental Kidnapping and U.S. Social Policy

Social workers, because of their central roles in dealing with the problems of families, require greater familiarity with the phenomenon of parental abduction of children. This article provides an overview of the social problem and summarizes major policy responses: the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act, the Parental Kidnapping Act of 1980, other criminal and civil remedies, The Hague Convention on International Child Abduction, and the International Child Abduction Act of 1987. The regulatory and enforcement systems are analyzed, and implications for social work practice are considered.

Kinship care: Two case management models

Children in the care and custody of the state are increasingly placed with “kin” rather than in “unrelated” foster homes. Current estimates suggest that 400,000 children are in kinship care arrangements, with a projected increase to over a half million by 1995 (Center for the Study of Social Policy, 1990). This article provides an overview of the trend toward increasing use of kinship care for foster children and the reasons for this development. It then presents the case management models currently used in kinship care cases by two large public child welfare agencies, and it concludes with discussion of these models and their implications.

Parental kidnapping across international borders

Judy has lived in Egypt for the past two years. Marginally employed and receiving some financial support from her parents, she is searching for the son she has not seen since the boy’s father knocked her unconscious and snatched him from their Texas home. The three years since their marriage fell apart have not been easy for Judy. She is not fluent in Arabic, and she is fighting for her rights as a parent within a social and legal system that places authority over the family in the hands of fathers. She has no way to enforce her US custody order because Egypt has not signed the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction.

How Parentally Abducted Children Fare: An Interim Report on Families who Recover Their Children

Parental abduction of children is a little-studied psychiatric and legal problem. Interviews were conducted with 69 parents whose children had been abducted and recovered, part of a larger group who responded to a written survey in 1989. Comparison of survey and follow up interview responses revealed a process of normalizing relationships with the abducting parent. At follow up, more cases showed a pattern that involved visits between the child and the former abductor, payment of child support, and decreased fear of another abduction. In 12 cases the child was living with the former abducting parent at follow up. Seventy-nine percent of the children had received mental health care since the abduction. Large proportions of the parents reported satisfaction with their childrens adjustment in four areas of functioning.