Essay Example on Foster Care Diversity: Examining the Unique Experiences of Foster Children

Hundreds of thousands of children are in foster care, a situation that makes them a special population. Many of these children have experienced mistreatment such as neglect and abuse. Neglect is the most common form of mistreatment and is the main reason why many children require foster care services. This essay examines how individual foster children are culturally diverse from each other. It also explains how the diversity is relevant to how these children seek out and interact with behavioral health services.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Foster care is culturally diverse by nature. Neglected and abused children are placed under the care of strangers in homes where communication styles and expectations are quite different from what they hail from. The world happens to be a melting pot for various different cultural norms, beliefs, personal practices, and configurations. Every child joins a foster home with different experiences and values. Irrespective of how welcoming their foster family is, children will have to adjust to traditions and rules that they are not familiar with. Learning how to cope and deal with such differences can be a challenge to children placed under foster care and the families that host them (Leloux-Opmeer, Kuiper, Swaab & Scholte, 2016).

When children are placed in foster care, they become exposed to diverse cultures and family structures. This can be quite overwhelming to the individual children and they tend to react differently. While one child may seamlessly connect with his or her foster parent, another may have a hard time warming up to and accepting the new family members. It is worth bearing in mind that some foster children do not possess the cognitive ability or life experience needed to understand certain cultural norms and practices. If they are below a specific phrase of growth and development, they may have no interest at all in cultural differences. Simply put, the foster children are trying to find their place in the world and figure out the concept of family.

Child welfare agencies are often the behavioral health services tasked with foster care. Cultural diversity is a major factor that influences how these agencies interact with foster children. According to Leloux-Opmeer, Kuiper, Swaab & Scholte (2016), some child welfare experts argue that a child's transition into foster care can be smoother and less traumatic if the foster parents have some cultural similarities, for instance, in terms of race or religion. Others are of the opinion that cultural elements should not play a role in who adopts the child. They argue that the child should be adopted by any foster family with the ability and willingness to care for him or her. All in all, many agencies strive to match foster children with parents of the same ethnic or religious backgrounds whenever possible. However, this can be difficult in situations where few foster families are of the same cultural background.

In general, there are no enough individual or families who can offer foster care to all the children who need it. In areas having a diverse set of ethnicities, religions and cultures, there is a particular demand for individuals who can offer satisfactory foster care. It would be an ideal situation of child welfare agencies would place children with foster families of the same ethnic and cultural backgrounds. A problem occurs in that, in addition to the general shortage of individuals who can offer foster, there is also a scarcity of those from specific cultural backgrounds. The only optimal solution for agencies is to find foster families who share the same race, ethnicity, language, or religion as the child's birth family. Clearly, it is not possible for all vulnerable children to be assigned to culturally similar foster homes. Thus, the next best solution is for child welfare agencies to find individuals capable of promoting the children's cultural identities (Blakely, Leon, Fuller & Bai, 2017).

I have a bias in favor of medically vulnerable special populations because I feel their needs are often underestimated. According to Cummings & Galambos (2016), the health domains of special populations can be split into three categories: social, psychological, and physical. The social category includes children in foster care, those living in abuse families, refugees, immigrants, and the homeless. Those in the psychological realm include individuals suffering from chronic mental health conditions and those battling substance or alcohol abuse. The physical category is made up of those with chronic medical conditions, people living with HIV/AIDS, and the disabled.

Medically vulnerable special populations include the chronically ill and those with chronic mental health conditions. In my own opinion, their needs are often underestimated despite the fact that they are quite serious. These needs can be life-threatening or debilitating, and require intensive and extensive medical and non-medical attention. I feel that the current service delivery and financing arrangements of these special populations. Disadvantaged populations such as low-income earners are significantly more susceptible to chronic health conditions. To make matters worse, the impact of such conditions is more severe among the less educated, those without health insurance, and the unemployed.

As a behavioral health paraprofessional, there are several internal challenges that I am expected to tackle in order to ensure that I am practicing effectively and ethically. The bias I have in favor of medically vulnerable special populations is one such challenge. All in all, I can confront the challenge by critically examining the challenge and reflecting on its effect on my role as a behavioral health paraprofessional. In any case, the bias will help me do something about the injustice facing the special population and solve the problems facing the individuals.

References

Blakely, G. L., Leon, S. C., Fuller, A. K., & Bai, G. J. (2017). Foster care children's kinship involvement and behavioral risks: A longitudinal study. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 26(9), 2450-2462.

Cummings, S. M., & Galambos, C. (2016). SPECIAL POPULATIONS. In Diversity and Aging in the Social Environment (pp. 43-82). Routledge.

Leloux-Opmeer, H., Kuiper, C., Swaab, H., & Scholte, E. (2016). Characteristics of children in foster care, family-style group care, and residential care: A scoping review. Journal of child and family studies, 25(8), 2357-2371.