The diploma thesis discusses the issue of kinship foster care, its specifics, strengths and weaknesses. It examines the views of grandparents, aunties, uncles and other relatives on their role in foster care and the children's life. The theoretical part is focused on basic topics in foster care, views on foster care and the development of children living in foster care. The practical part of the thesis is focused on semi-structured interviews with care givers which should tell us facts about their views of foster care, why children are placed in their family, practical problems and help which they need. There are also casuistries of foster care families.

Children who are in foster care or who have been adopted often face uncommon challenges, as do their families and providers. Child and adolescent psychiatrists have a unique role in aiding these children and their adult caretakers. Foster care has long been a source of public policy debate over the role of child welfare agencies in determining when to remove a child, and more recently over the costs of placements and additional services that these children often need. Current controversies concern gay and lesbian foster care, custody relinquishment, multiple placements, and health-care delivery while in foster care. We focus initially on entry into foster care and the implications for the child, particularly the impact on their health and development. Other factors considered include care coordination, or lack of, multiple placements, and grandparent/kinship care. Issues surrounding adoption are explored, including "closed" and "open" adoptions, race, and age. We emphasize recent research on gay and lesbian biological families, and the finding that they are just as capable at raising children as heterosexual parents at adoption. Also highlighted is the choice between custody and care that faces many parents of severely mentally ill children. Finally we look at the special concerns relating to international adoption. Case vignettes are presented to highlight the practical aspects of fostering and adoption.

Virtually nothing is known about the characteristics used to select foster families. This study examined if and how psychosocial problems, income, education, race and the supply of and demand for foster families are related to the approval of families to foster and the placement of children. Families who were approved and who had a child placed had fewer problems and higher incomes than families who were not approved and who did not have a child placed. Income moderated the effect of problems on placement. Race, education, and supply/demand were not related to approval or placement. In many respects results support the efficacy of the selection process.

Providing effective foster care is a major undertaking that continues to plague this country. The ultimate goal of substitute care is to provide child victims of maltreatment with a safe and nurturing home environment. The goal of this theory driven research project was to identify ecological factors correlated with effective non-kin family foster care. Various levels of analysis were considered including individual, family and community. The findings of this study identified three factors as significant predictors of effective foster care. Included are implications for social work in the areas of practice, policy, and research.

Substance use is a serious and growing problem in the U.S. The impact of substance use disorders is vast and can affect more than the person with the disorder. Drug overdose deaths and related hospitalizations are positively associated with a rise in foster care case nationwide. When a child is removed from a home, social workers see first if there are biological family members who could provide a suitable home for the child as to make the transition less disruptive for the child. The average age of a kin caregiver was 59 years old in 2018, so this likely means grandparents are stepping in the caregiver role. Appalachia specifically has been hit hard by the opioid epidemic, and its rates of both overdose deaths and foster care cases have greatly increased. However, no research has analyzed the association between rates of grandparents as primary caregivers of children and county-level drug overdose mortality rates in Appalachia specifically and then compared that to the same association for non-Appalachian areas. Thus, this study decided to examine the association between those variables with a national dataset made from county-level data from multiple sources, mainly the CDC National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau American Communities Survey (ACS). A cross-sectional analysis of 5-year estimates for drug overdose mortality on a county-level associated with the ACS data on grandparents acting as primary caregivers of grandchildren under the age of 18 was performed. There were three hypotheses: 1) counties with higher rates of drug overdose mortality will have higher rates of grandparents acting as primary caregivers of children under 18 years old, 2) the rate of grandparents serving as primary guardians of children under 18 years old will be higher in Appalachian counties than in non-Appalachian counties, 3) the correlation between grandparents serving as primary caregivers of children under 18 years old and drug overdose mortality will be stronger in Appalachian counties as opposed to non. For each hypothesis, a bivariate analysis was run independently, and by using multivariate modeling, the association between grandparents as primary caregivers and overdose mortality was evaluated. Running these analyses determined some statistically significant results: as overdose rates increase, rates of grandparent guardians increase; the rate of grandparent caregivers is higher in Appalachian counties than non-Appalachian counties; and there is a stronger correlation between overdose mortality rate increases and grandparents as caregivers increases in Appalachian counties as opposed to non-Appalachian counties. This is useful as there is a lack of research discussing this specific relationship, especially in rural areas such as in Appalachia. Furthermore, these results could help inform policies and programs to support grandparent guardians and help lessen the impacts of parental substance use for children.

Foster care alumni are a unique subset of college students who enter post-secondary education having faced significant socio-economic challenges and emotional trauma. These students often understand how attending post-secondary education can help create a more stable life. However, the graduation of this population is extremely low. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand formerly fostered youths' perspectives of the needs and stressors students face while attending post-secondary education. Specifically, the researcher wanted to understand what characteristics influence former foster care youth to enroll in college and what characteristics help former foster care youth persist in higher education until graduation. The study utilized both student departure theory and resilience theory to frame each research question conceptually. The results illuminated the resilience of former fostered youth attending post-secondary education and their characteristics for continued enrollment.

This study focused on a policy that promotes educational stability for foster children in a southern state in the US. At the time of this study, this policy had not been fully adopted across the state which resulted in foster children not routinely receiving the interventions necessary for improving academic outcomes. Using the diffusion of innovation theory as a framework, the purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore how local-level leaders impacted the successful adoption of education policy in one county office of a statewide child welfare agency. Data were collected from a sample of 5 case managers and a review of the literature. The data were coded and analyzed using Colaizzi's 7-step method of data analysis. Results revealed the specific actions that were taken by county-level leaders to impact the successful adoption of the policy. Such actions included the allocation of resources and the intentional inclusion of informal leaders in decision-making around policy implementation. The social change implications stemming from this study include recommendations made to program leadership to consider practical changes to policy implementation that may result in successful adoption of this policy. Such changes may lead to foster children across the state receiving the benefits of the evidence-based supports outlined in the policy and may lead to an improvement in the delivery of services to vulnerable populations served by the child welfare agency.

The Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program is an organization that utilizes lay volunteers as advocates for children in foster care to improve outcomes for those children. The effectiveness of CASAs in achieving permanency outcomes for children in foster care has been established; however, the literature has significant methodological flaws and is outdated. The purpose of this study, guided by the theory of change and social cognitive theory, was to explore whether CASA self-efficacy, through a proxy measure of education level, is related to permanency outcomes such as reunification with parents and rate of reentry to the foster care system for children in foster care. Archived data from a CASA database in Southern Idaho were examined using non-parametric statistics. The data included 138 cases, who were served by 78 CASA volunteers. The education of the CASA volunteers was used as the independent variable: 10 had a high school diploma, 23 had some college, and 45 were college graduates. Chi-square analyses indicated that there was no significant relation between the education level of CASA volunteers and permanency outcomes in the individual cases, and also that there was no significant relation between the education level of CASA volunteers and reentry rates of child protection cases on which they have served. The research contributed to social change by increasing awareness of the role the CASA program plays in the lives of children and their families involved in the child welfare system and highlighting the need for current research, as well as establishing that educational level may not be an important factor in the outcomes of CASA cases. Suggested areas for future research include a direct examination of the relation of self-efficacy of CASA volunteers about permanency outcomes and reentry rates with a larger, more generalizable population.

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