Browsing by Subject "foster care"

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An Untold Story of Hardship: How COVID-19 Has Uniquely Impacted American Foster Parents
(2021-05) Das, Rahul
COVID-19 has drastically impacted our world from a health, economic, and psychological perspective. However, certain segments of the American population have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and historically neglected. One of these groups if foster parents. In this thesis, I aim to unearth the unique challenges the COVID-19 pandemic has created for American foster parents . My ultimate intentions of this paper are to raise awareness, particularly within The University of Texas at Austin community, for the need to support American foster parents in times of crisis and to spur said awareness into tangible action. I begin the paper by providing an overview of the American foster care system to establish baseline knowledge and context for the rest of the thesis. I then describe my interview-driven research methodology and employ the insights from my primary and secondary research to describe nine pre-pandemic problems for foster parents that were exacerbated by COVID-19 and six novel challenges that were created by COVID-19. Finally, I conclude the thesis with recommendations based off insights learned from my research and discuss key life lessons I took away from this thesis-writing and research process.
Cradle to Grave: Texas "Disproportionality" from Foster Care to Death Row
(2009-01-01) James, Joy
Hogg Foundation News, 1999, Winter, Vol. 33
(1999) Hogg Foundation for Mental Health
Policy and Practice Recommendations for Ensuring that Foster Care Serves Children’s Best Interests
(University of Texas at Austin Population Research Center, 2020-04) Font, Sarah A.; Gershoff, Elizabeth T.
The Child as a Whole: A Proposed Model for Addressing Mental and Behavioral Conditions of Foster Care Youth
(2023-05) Nievera, Maisie; Faulkner , Monica R.
Most children who are removed from their biological homes because of abuse or neglect are placed in foster care. The trauma of being separated from the only family they know, and the potentially frequent movements to different foster homes, puts these children at risk for psychological disorders. Physicians are prescribing psychotropic drugs at an alarming rate despite the existence of other alternatives with less harmful effects. Foster parents and other advocates acknowledge that the side effects of these medications, which can include weight gain, diabetes, obesity, hallucinations, and others, may harm these patients in the long run. In this study, I conduct a literature review on the issue of high psychotropic utilization by foster children using research articles, organizational briefs, and government documents from the 1990s to the 2020s. Building on a study by Fisher et al. (2009), I propose a new approach to providing treatment options and holistic health care to foster youth with mental and behavioral health concerns. The proposed model encompasses the use of various points of intervention that may be used simultaneously and includes Mode 1, Trauma-Informed Screening, Mode 2, Assessing and Encouraging Opportunities for Stability and Normalcy, and Mode 3, Recommending Specialized Treatments. The intended use of this model is to serve as a physician guide during patient consultations to resolve issues in unbalanced and/or uninformed decision-making. To ensure that this approach is effective at improving foster population health, policymakers and leaders in medicine should consider embedding integrated foster health services within clinical settings, thus granting foster families access to the resources outlined in the model.
Therapeutic horsemanship and children adopted from foster care : a case study analysis using mixed methods
(2007-08) Cody, Patricia Anne; Franklin, Cynthia
The purpose of this study was to explore the potential benefits of a therapeutic horsemanship program for children adopted from foster care and their adoptive mothers. Standardized measures, open-ended interviews and surveys were administered to determine effects on external child behavior, child self-esteem and parenting stress. The Child Behavior Checklist was administered to measure behavioral challenges in the children in this sample. There were no statistically significant changes on any of the CBCL scales. Qualitative data from the mothers, Instructors and researcher observations show some affect on behavior. The Culture Free Self-Esteem Inventory-3 was administered to measure self-esteem of the nine children in the sample. The decrease on the Global Self-Esteem Quotient of the CFSEI-3 was statistically significant using. Of the nine children, only three of them scored in the clinical range at pre-test. Of these three, two moved into the normal range and the third improved her score to be very close to the normal range. Qualitative data from the mothers, Instructors and researcher observations support this finding. The Total Stress score of the Parenting Stress Index -- Short Form for the mothers in the sample did not show a statistically significant decrease. Six of the nine mothers' pre-test and post-test scores were in the clinical range and only three had decreased post-test scores. The Qualitative data obtained through interviews, surveys and observations did not support a direct impact of the program on stress levels but rather an impact on level of support. Many mothers reported that they liked spending time with the other mothers to share resources and discuss their children. The data collected in this study does not provide sufficient evidence to make any causal statements about therapeutic horsemanship programs and children adopted from foster care. It does, however, provide support for the need for future research. The findings from this study have implications for meeting the needs of a variety of children adopted from foster and their adoptive parents.