The foster care system looks to find interventions to help improve the quality of life for children placed in foster care homes. In the process to try to improve the children's quality of life, interventions are created. Intervention programs are created for the foster care children and the care givers. The interventions look through lenses of various theories to get a rational set of ideas that help explain a situation. Theories allow situations to be looked at in different ways according to different factors within the micro, mazzo, and macro systems. This paper explores interventions, views them through the lenses of various theories and examines how social work is actively involved through out the foster care system.
Keywords: Foster care, KEEP, MTFC, empowerment theory, systems theory, resilience theory, strengths perspective, biopsychosocial approach.
Introduction.
An ideal environment for the social, emotional, and developmental growth of children does not always exist in today's society or with their parents. When parents cannot provide adequate care for their children for some reason, they can end up spending their youth in the child welfare system better known as foster care. Defining foster care is a challenge. Foster care is when a child needs a temporary home with another family/stranger. The most common definition for foster care is " care given outside a child's natural home for more than 24 hours when the child's home is not available to him or her" (Stone, 1970). Children of all ages end up in the foster care system year after year. When these forgotten children become adults they are expected to enter into society without the proper support. Foster care in America is inadequate for children and needs to be improved. Improvements are critical to the foster care system. This essay will analyze how foster care can be considered a social justice issue, how social work is addressing this issue, and how theory may have informed the social work practice.