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TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due. MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested. DATE DUE - DATE DUE DATE DUE nor? 2.1L ”4% gqumgzom 6/01 c:/ClRC/DateDue.p65-p.15 ———-—— __> \‘ MSU I 1??“th 1.13! 155 r I S) A STUDY OF THE DUPLICATIOKS IN THE STATISTICAL RECORDS KEPT BY THE STATE DEPiRTEEXT OF SOCIAL WELFARE, I=lICEIIGAN, or THE CHILDR"” E CII WWW-r: A v \ .- — .. “A! Lliuxxm- COUNTY IN FOSTER CARE IN 1954 by Francis Chidley Rohlehr Pollard A PROJECT REPORT Submitted to the Department of Social Work, Michigan State College, * P9 tiol Fulfillr t f *‘ .Ln “1" c. .- ten 0 one Requirements for the Degree of_ MASTER CF SOCInL WORK Kay 1955 Approved: /vu22n4£/ l£EZ;Ac// Chairman, Research Committee €S,EVV\£Q&/CVCR§N\ggnfispQJL. .1 IHeao of Departmezt ‘ -1 PREFACE he study which is the subject of this report was part of a larger project undertaken by the writer in con- nection with his field work placement at the State Depart- ment of Social Welfare of hichigan. The overall project aimed at developing an administrative tool for obtaining an unduplicated count of the children in foster care in Richigan. Alas, not enough energy or spirit was left for the whole after the part was completed. The tool was not fashioned. Instead, recommendations on the situations producing the duplications and on methods for obtaining an unduplicated count were presented to the State Depart- ment. These recommendations have been attached to the report. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS With profound feelings of indebtedness the writer wishes to express his gratitude to the numerous persons who have assisted him in carrying out this research pro- ject. Special mention must be made of Kiss RUbh Bowen, Kr. Manfred Liliefors, Mr. Donald DeVinney and particular- ly Kiss Helen Little of the Michigan State Department of Social Welfare, whose help and advice at all stages of the project were invaluable. The assistance provided by Pro- fessor Bernard Ross and other members of the faculty of the Department of Social Work at Michigan State College must also be recorded. Finally, the writer wishes to acknowledge the support which his wife gave him even to the detriment of her own participation in a similar un— dertaking. ii TABLE OF COIL’TENTS ACKI'OJLED*S........... ii TEL-ELLE OF CO}: EIIT o o o o o o o o o 0 iii LIST OF TJ‘LIBES O C C C O O O O O O O V iv Chapter Page I. IIITRCDUCTIOII . . . . . . . . . 1 II. THE PURPOSE OF TEE STUDY . . . . . 7 III. THE FOSTER CARE SERVICES. . . . . 17 IV. THE REPOTTII'C SYSTEI-I . . . . . . 24 V. I-ZETHOD OF .ES EIRCEI . . . . . . . 29 VI. TE-IE FII‘YDII‘IGS . . . . . . . . . 35 ‘TII O CC::CLUSICT:AJ q 0 O O O O O O O O 64 BIBLIOGRPLPIIY o o o o o o o o o o o o 69 IAIPPEEIDIX o o o o o o o o o o o o o 72 iii 6330382— aauaaouoflsofidvoflaa womapggon egos-€80 e8 oaafifighueofifiaagwfigngfigufifia can v9.98.“ “:5 on no: v.38 3833ng 05 ad. 25 60030an Modems 5a amass: Eugene .nebotofifl Sfidbeetfiaflofiegoo .33 8:“ .flum .hfi -3835 has. no :53 3 253.23 85 88 3.3823. 8a .3899. 33 53.... :gfipfinlfiagfiafiiflogdg «usualpuosafi Eggnog» 8.5 398%. 883.5 3: .3 .839. as. guess.“ B 38» .8383? «5 23... on .755 had-.38» and 8.303.” 3 @393 285 no§8 0.30 Samoa 93 .3 Shanon 83m§3a38§§§o§§uouiaaofi .838“ ofiaoohhooa gfioflflgfigfisbfifiwfiafiafi 8:8 Esnngfiufladzfl you oghomqaog 3 £33.53» 38?: Shanna is. «293.5 .Sufiagfigafifimfipfivwgfig 33.. Ba 3.238%... on... SE.— ufifififififi .83? 29 336E. coo ad. 853 n3 bang—came .98» usefiajgg Bufiafioovflgaefifigfibu.§8 SSEfifikuBefluflpo opens-par «08388 5598333.... «5...: .388... 055853.. agengaougéggo» ngfififiafigfia .hnllnm 5352 .5“; H398 a g 3.5. «fl .8380 gin JRHaEOLgmagg 8h coda «a .fimEqE .983»: 198 so Egon 33m abgggusnnflfigfionfiaaatg< .eflatofinfin 3-0 J Table LIST OF TABLES PARTICIPATIOII OF FOS'I ER CARE SEE? 335 I: DUPLICATIOUS, °"CJT”" XL LBER CF OAS ES AHD TIIES REPORT LSD o o o 0 o o o o 0 PER CENT OF DUPLICATIONS I} C.AS ES REPORT- ED 0 O O O O O O O PARTICIPATION OF S_3RVICES LITT EACH OTHER IN D TCPLI VATIOHS, BY CASES . . . . . PARTICIPATION OF JUVENILE COURT IN CASES OF DUPLICATION . . . . . . . . . AGENCY RELATIONSHIPS IN CASES OF DUPLICA- T1014? 0 o o o o o o o o o o 0 EVALUATION or AGESCV RELATIOTISHIPS IN CASES OF DUPLICATIOH . . . . . . . REASONS FOR DUPLICATIONS, BY RELATIONSHIPS RELATIOEISHIPS CAUSIHG DUPLICATIONS ATTRI- BUTED TO FOS TER CARE SERVICES . . . . RELATIO"S‘IPC CAUSI"G DUPLIC TIOES ATTRI- BUTED TO “IRCULSTATCLS AID NEEDS OF THE C.-ILDR::‘I o o o o o o o o o o 0 TOTAL CASES REPORTED TO STATE DEP RTLLJT BY GIILD CARING FACILITIEU AND NUHEER IN FCSTm CARE, IHGHAH COUITY 1954 . . . FOSTER CKRE DUPLICATI US, IiOh WI G TIMES REPORTLD AYD AGEKCY RELETICNSHIPS . . . TYPES OF BOARDING CELE IE INDEPENDENT BOARDING HOME PROGRAR, SHOWIEG PER Cam CF DUPLICIXTICDES o o o o I o o o o TYPES OF AGEIC r“ REL} TCI YSIIIPS LI CASES OF DUPLICI: TICL‘ES o o o o o o o o 0 iv 42 44 '73 73 .\] U1 «9 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Act 47, P.A. 1944, First Extra Session, of the Laws of Michigan stipulates that each agency, institution or boarding home caring for children away from their own fam- ilies shall be licensed and, shall keep records regarding each child in its control and care as the department of social welfare may pre- scribe and shall report to said department, whenever called for, such facts as it may require with reference to such children upon blazks furnished by the department. The purpose of licensing and reporting are twofold - to protect children by establishing minimum standards for care as a condition for licensing, and to improve standards of child care through the continuing consul- tation and c00peration of licensed child welfare agen- cies and the State Department of Social Welfare. Hi—torical Backvround C1 The development of state boards of charities during the latter half of the 19th century for the supervision of the institutions run by the state for special handicapped groups started a trend that has never been reversed. "The increasing importance of the tasks undertaken by state boards is a measure of the public's acceptance of the state's State of Michigan, Department of Social Welfare, Child Care Institutions and Child Placing Agencies: Be; guirements for Licensing and Recommended Standards, Lansing, March 1953, Foreword. -2- responsibility to furnish protection or opportunity to those who cannot provide these services for themselves."2 By the end of the century the state boards, the forerunners of the modern state departments of social welfare, were extending their supervision to include private agencies and they found approval of this new function among some of the child welfare agencies. The question of their authority to supervise private agencies did not become acute until later.3 In 1913 Kichigan settled this question by enacting a statute requiring agencies and institutions providing foster care services for children to be licensed.4 The law was rewritten in 1944,5 and extended in l951 to include / compulsory reporting by independent boarding homes.O U (I) e of Records Reporting, properly used, is an important super- visory tool. It is an aid in evaluating an agency's work, in indicating strengths that should be encouraged and in pointing out weaknesses that need attention. From the re- ports submitted by the various child welfare agencies, the State Department of Social Welfare obtains information 2 Frank J. Bruno, Trends in Social Work, Columbia University Press, New York, 1958, p. 43. 3 Ibid., p. 42. 4 5 Act NO. 300, P.A. 1913. Act No. 47, P.A. 1944, First Extra Session. 5 Act No. 96, P.A. 1951, amending Act He. 47. -3- about the number of children receiving care from these agencies, the characteristics of such children and the duration of their stay in foster homes or children's in- stitutions. The district children's consultants, whose responsibilities include offering consultation to child welfare agencies and making agency studies preparatory to the issue or renewal of licenses, often use statistical data extracted from the reports. Armed with this data they are in a position to offer help to agencies on questions concerning the volume of their caseloads in relation to the size of their staffs and the difficulty of the problems being tackled. However, on account of the duplication7 which occurs whenever a child is reported more than once, the records do not give as true a picture of the total foster care population as of the caseloads of the individ- ual agencies. "The kinds of problems that make it necessary to place children and youth outside their own homes are usu- ally connected with dependen y, neglect, birth out of wed- lock, and serious behavior problems."8 To serve such wide areas of need a variety of private and public agencies 7 In this study the word 'duplication' has been given a special meaning as defined in Chapter II on page 13. 8 Michigan Youth Commission, Services for Children Outside Their Own Homes: A Report to the Honorable G. Mennen Williams, Governor, tovember 1953, p. D-l. -14... have been established. Included among them are juvenile courts, child placing agencies, child caring institutions, training schools and independent boarding homes. The ser- vices of many different agencies are often sought in pro- viding for the care of children outside their own homes. Usually this is done with one child welfare agency assum- ing responsibility for the case and contacting other re- sources. But there are instances where, in the interests of all concerned, it is necessary or convenient for such responsibility to be shared or to change hands from one agency to another. Sometimes, too, an agency may close a case after returning a child to his own home, only to find itself forced to reopen the case when the home situa- tion again breaks down. These and other circumstances cause some children to be reported more than once to the State Department of Social Welfare in the same year, with the result that duplications occur in any statistical count made of the children in foster care. Problems Created by Duplication Duplication always presents a challenge to the user of statistical records. Unless the duplication is estimated, it destroys the accuracy of data that have been extracted from the records. Secondly, it suggests that there may be a flaw in the procedure for collecting the data. Further, it may be indicative of an even more basic defect, such as inadequate understanding of the -5- conditions being observed. For these reasons, wherever duplication appears, it should be known and estimated and special devices should be employed to investigate, under- stand, correct, control and prevent it. The duplications in the records of the State De- partment of Social Welfare prevent an accurate count of the children in foster care from being computed. Because of this dilemma, comprehensive totals of the children in foster care are not published. Figures of the children in the different types of services are usually presented, but any total obtained by adding together these figures will produce a greatly expanded count of the foster care popu- lation. The inability to give a comprehensive total of the number of children in foster care is often a source of frustration. Only approximate figures were available to the Joint Legislative Committe appointed in 1949 to study the need for foster care of children in Michigan. The com- mittee was interested in securing "more adequate information on the amount of money now spent for foster care and the number of children in need of such care who are not taken care of."9 Accurate statistical data were needed for es- timating the per capita cost of foster care, determining 9 Joint Legislative Committee to Study Foster Care, Foster Care in Michigan: Report of the Joint Legislative Committee, State Department of Social Welfare, 1951, p. 6. -6- the ratio between the foster care population and the total child population, and tracing the trends of the foster care program. Since the duplication in the records was not es- timated, the conclusions drawn from the available data are open to question. This is but one example of the disadvantage of not being able to obtain an unduplicated count of the children in foster care. Administratively, this lack is a rather serious handicap to overall state planning. For instance, it is felt that the foster care population in Michigan has remained stable for the last ten years despite the rapid increase of the child pOpulation in the state during this period. Whether or not this feeling is true cannot be verified from the current records except through consider- able and laborious effort. If true, it may mean that there are not enough foster care facilities available, or that more attention is given to children in their own homes before foster care placement becomes necessary. Without accurate statistical data, questions of such vital impor- tance to planning cannot be properly investigated. CHAPTER I I THE PURPOSE OF THE STUDY ,1") The purpose of this study is to determine the reasons for the duplications which occur in the statistical records kept by the State Department of Social Welfare of the children from Ingham County in foster care in 1954. It is not the aim to question the appropriateness of foster care placement as a method of dealing with children whose families have failed. Nor is the study an evaluation of the foster care services, even though some aspects of the investigation may reflect the quality of these services. Rather, it is an attempt to identify and evaluate the fac- tors responsible for the duplications in the statistical records of the State Department. The duplications indicate that the services of more than one agency were used, or that the services of one agency were used more than once, in providing foster care. A study of the duplications can therefore aid the under- standing of the types of relationships in which agencies engage in offering service to children outside their own homes. For purposes of supervision and planning such know- ledge is of great value. The usefulness of this study is thus mainly administrative, for, in pointing out what the duplications mean, information about the practices employed -8- in administering foster care services is furnished. Also, the study is an aid to the State Department in "the de- velopment of sound programs and standards of child welfare ....throughout the state."10 g3 Unduplicated Count One outcome of the investigation, it was hoped, would be the discovery of a procedure for obtaining an unduplicated count of the children in foster care in the state of Michigan, and special emphasis has been given to this consideration in the study. Administrative limita- tions were provided for the procedure to be recommended. It was shown that the existing relationships between the State Department and the reporting agencies were largely voluntary,11 and so it would be difficult to enforce any scheme calling for additional work on the part of the agen- cies in preparing reports. Further, any method which re- quired a great expenditure of time and money and the em- ployment of increased staff would be inadvisable. The aim was thus to develop a procedure that could be used by the present staff of the State Department with data available from report blanks similar to those currently in use. 10 Act 280, P.A. 1939, Section 14 (c). 11 Although the State Department has the support of the law in requesting reports from the agencies, it has no administrative control over the private agencies. Because it relies so much on the cooperation of these agencies, the Department must avoid using its legal authority very much. That methods could be devised for obtaining an un- duplicated count of the children in foster care in Michigan without a careful study of the duplications was recognized early. By a process of alphabetical listing and isolation of the cases of duplication (similar to the method used in this study) an unduplicated count for the state could be procured. If it is argued that this method is costly, time-consuming and subject to error, and requires the same volume of work from year to year, other methods could be devised without recourse to a study of the duplications. A central registration of all cases reported, for example, and the use of a reliable coded index would affix to each child a Single number or distinguishing mark no matter how often he were reported. Such a device would prevent a child from being counted more than once in spite of being reported several times. After the system has been set up, it would be easy to obtain accurate totals of the number of children in foster care, for all the services together as well as for each service separately. Thus, the method used for obtaining an unduplicated count of the children in foster care need not eliminate the duplications in the records. Indeed, it is felt that ef- forts to prevent such duplications would produce inaccurac- ies in the records and would cause some cases of foster care service not to be reported. It would in such case be un- wise statistically to make radical changes in the present -10.. system of reporting for the sake of eliminating the dupli— cations. In any event, since one of the primary uses of the reports and records is providing information for con- sultation to the child welfare agencies, it is important to know all the cases in which an agency has been active, even if other agencies have also participated in giving service to these cases. Neither the study of the duplications nor the elim- ination of them seems to be a necessary step in the direc- 'tion of obtaining an unduplica ted count. This conclusion does not invalidate the usefulness of the study from the II 12 [I point of view of developing a procedure for unduplicating the count. The study indicates conditions that must be 2 Although not yet in the dictionary, the verb 'unduplicate' and its participial form 'unduplicated' are in common use in research circles. Since 1951 Mrs. Esther Moore in her address to the National Conference of Social Work referred to an "unduplicated family count". MOre re- cently, the Division of Research of the Children's Bureau, Social Security Administration, circularized the depart- ments of social welfare of the various states, (Form CB—251. I-S - January 1955 - Budget Bureau No. 72-R512) the pur- pose of which was "to obtain an unduplicated count of the children served during the year by public welfare agencies." The use of the prefix 'un' with 'duplicate' conforms to grammatical ruling as stated in Webster' s New International Dictionary, Second Edition, - "An inseparable verbal prefix used: a. With Verbs (esp. when intransitive) to express the contrary, or reversal, and not the simple negative, of the action of the vero to which it is prefixed, as in unoend, uncoil, undo, unfold....Sometimes participles and participial adjectives formed with this prefix coincide in form with com- pounds of the negative prefix un— (see 2d un-) as in undone @rom undo) meaning unfastened, ruined, and undone (from 2d un— and done) meaning not done, not finished." In keeping with the usage explained above, 'to unduplicate' means 'to reverse or remove the duplication' and 'unduplicated' means 'without duplication or not duplicated'. -11- applied to any method that is devised. It is shown, for instance, that methods which eliminate the duplications a the same time defeat one of the main purposes of the re- cords - providing information for evaluating and offering consultation to the child welfare agencies. It is therefore necessary to seek a device that does not interfere radi- cally with the system of collecting and recording the re- ports, or that unduplicates the count after the records have been made. Moreover, the duplications in the records illustrate an aspect of the foster care services that prevails and needs investigation. There are always cases in the ser- vice of which more than one agency is active. Are these situations inevitable? Are they consistent with recognized practice? Or, are they uneconomical and preventable? Do they indicate a competition for service? The answers to these and similar questions are valuable equipment for a supervisory authority like the State Department of Social Welfare. mam This project has been limited to the study of the duplications in the records of the children from Inglam County who were in foster care in 1954. The State Depart- ment also keeps records of children receiving welfare ser- vices other than foster care, and it is known that there are cases of duplication in these records too. For example, -12- the cases of all children referred to the juvenile court are reported to the State Department irrespective of the way in which they have been disposed. Several children commit in the same year more than one offense requiring the court's attention. If they commit a new offense after their old case has been closed, they are reported to the State De- partment more than once and the result is duplications in the records. Records are also kept of children served in their own.homes by the private agencies, the state insti- tutions and the county children's services.13 However, since the primary concern of Act 47 is for "the regulation and supervision of the care and placement of minor children"14 away from their own families, it has been decided to devote this study to the duplications in the records of children in foster care only. For the sake of convenience, the study has been restricted to Ingham County. Ingham County is a manageable unit since the unduplicated number of cases of children A 15 . in foster care is only 802, wnereas the number of cases in he state is approximately 40,000. Further, Ingham County contains both an urban and a rural population and 13 See, State of Michigan, Department of Social wei— fare, agency and Institutional Cars of Children in kichigan: Annual Statistical Report 1953, Lansing, Michigan, August 1954, p. 8. 14 Act 47, op. cit., Pream le. 15 Exact count for 1954 obtained in the course of this study. -13- is provided with most of the various types of agencies offering foster care services. It is likely that the main factors contributing to the duplications in the records for the state, with the possible exception of Wayne County,16 will be observed in a study of the cases of Ingham County. However, it is expected that these factors will be dis- tributed in different proportions in other counties and therefore the validity of using data gathered from the re- cords of one county for predicting conditions obtaining in other counties of the state should be tested. Definitions In general usage the term 'duplication' is loaded with negative connotations. It at once suggests over— lapping, wastage, inefficiency. No such value concepts are attributed to the word in this study. Duplication does not imply duplication of service nor duplicate re- cords. It is used specifically to refer to the case of any child whose name appears more than once in the records kept by the State Department. There are many such cases and these are referred to variously as 'duplications' or 'cases of duplication'. This study deals with the dupli- _cations in the foster care records for 1954. Its purpose is to discover the reasons for these duplications and so 16 Conditions in Wayne County, because of Detroit, are usually quite unique. The peculiarities of this county must be capitalized, however, since about one—third of the population of Michigan lives in it. -14- it would be unfortunate to begin by assuming what these reasons signify. "Foster care denotes the type of care that is given to children who must be separated from their natural families."17 It does not include the care provided by nursery schools, day care centers, summer camps, boarding schools and other facilities run primarily for purposes of education and group experience.18 In this study it means, the care of children away from their own homes, in institutions, or in family homes in which foster parents are not related to the children. Institutional care in- cludes care in county juvenile detention homes and in he Boys' Vocational School and Girls' Training School, as well as in private child-caring institutions and ma- ternity hospitals licensed to care for children. It does not include licensed summer camps or boarding schools or the state institutions for mentally ill and deficient. Foster homes include all licensed homes both paid and free, ncluding those in which placement is for purposes of adoption and those which provide day care only. It does not include nursery schools and day care centers.19 In practice, children in juvenile dention homes are not re— ported as such to the State Department. Detention care is a court service and when children receiving such ser- vice are reported, this is included in the juvenile court report. 17 Helen R. Hagan, "Foster Care for Children", Social Work Yearbook 1954, A.A.S.W., p. 225. 18 The Social Welfare Commission, through the State Department of Social Welfare, licenses these facilities also. ‘ 19 Join Legislative Committee to Study Foster Care, op. cit., p. 23. H ‘ The phrase 'from Ingham County' is used in a special sense. A child is considered to be from Ingham County if he was admitted from this county to a child welfare agen- cy. His residence is regarded as being the same as that of his parents or other persons responsible for his care at the time of his acceptance by the agency. Legal resi- dence such as is required in order to establish eligibility for relief from the county departments of social welfare is not used in determining the county from which a child comes. As children from Ingham County are sometimes placed in institutions outside the county, the records of all the private agencies in the state were examined for Cases of Ingham County children. A variation of this definition was made in connec— tion with children in independent boarding homes. In their reports to the State Department, these homes are not re- quired to state the county from which the children in their care have been accepted. Conse,uently, it has been assumed in this study that the children in independent boarding homes in Ingham County are from Ingham County. While it is realized that this assumption is not likely to be en- tirely true, since children from other counties may be in Insham Countr homes and vice versa ret this anomal L/ , should not seriously affect the results of the study. The juvenile court exercises jurisdiction in pro- ceedings concerning children "found within the county". f "N -1 x! - Even a liberal interpretation of the phrase 'from Ingha; County' would not allow for the inclusion of all cases tha may be subsumed under 'found within the county'. H wever, in providing foster care service for dependent, neglected and delinquent children, the juvenile courts sually restrict their activities to children from their own counties.2O It is therefore to be expected that all the children in court foster homes of Ingham County are from Ingham Coun y and that children from the county will not be found in court homes in other counties. The child welfare agencies which have to report to the State Department are those which receive minor chil- dren for care or placement. "'Minor children' according to the statute means children under the age of 17 years."21 However, the agencies may maintain responsibility, either legally or voluntarily, for children in their care until the children have attained the age of 19 years. Thus, the cases of all children from Ingham County who are under 19 years old and in foster care come within the purview of this study. As mentioned earlier, included among them are chil- dren whose problems range from dependency and neglect to anti-social behavior. D) O P a ~ 0 1 Ruca of the reason for this practice is that the administering the court services are provided by es funds for the counti 21 State of Michigan, Department of Social Welfare, Child Care Institutions and Child Placing Agencies: :9- quirements for Licensing and Recommended Standards, Lansing, LaI'CH 1953, p. l. CHAPTER III +3 M r11 0 01 E? E3 F) r H U) gg -< H C) H U) The needs of children requiring care outside their own homes are many and varied. Accordingly, the services that have been developed to cater for these needs are also diversified. For the normal dependent or neglected child, placement with a foster family is the usual plan. Host of the children in foster care receive this type of service, and they are to be found in paid or free boar ing homes, work or wage homes, or adoptive homes. Sometimes, however, the mental and emotional problems presented by children needing foster care are so great that special provisions have to be made. In such cases, institutional care of one type or another is sometimes the recommended program. But, serious as the children's problems may be, they are not al- ways as great a source of trouble to agencies as the pro- blems presented by their parents. Thus, important among the foster care services is the juvenile court, equipped with authority to determine, curtail or sever the rights of parents. All foster care is not full-time care. Many parents require foster care service for their children only during their working hours. The homes they use are day care homes. Foster care services are provided by public and private agencies, sectarian and non—sectarian organiza- tions and iLle idu al families. The services which ca tor for children from Inghe m County may be div ed into five categories: Private Aéencies These agencies, which include child placing agen- cies, child caring institutions and agencies performing; both functions, serve children referred by their own parents, guardians or rela.tives, or committed by the juvenile court. q Usually the parents or the court provide the funds for the .0 care 01 the children they have referred. Sometimes, however, parents refuse or cannot afford to pay for this care and the entire burden of the cost is left on the aczency . In such cases, some agencies have the cl lild ren committed to them by the juvenile court, which may then contribute toxrard the cost of care. his practice is uncommon in Ingham County where the court provides a arge placement service of its own. However, the court makes ample use of the priva .te institu- tions for placing children whom it finds difficult to place. A more rejular practice of the private agencies in Ingham County is to seek legal custody of children from the court in order to est: blish definite relationships with difficult parents. Children committed to the private as encies by the court remain wards of the court until their cases are per- manently disposed of by the court, or until they rea h the age of 19 years. There are three private agencies located in Ingham County, and the great majority of children from the county in the care of private agencies has been placed by these agencies. Two of the agencies, the Ingham County Branch of the Kichigan Children's Aid Society and the Ca holic Social Service, are child placing agencies. The other, the St. Vincent Home for Children, is a children's institution. Reports from all branches of the Michige Children's Aid Society are sent to the State Department from the society's headquarters in Detroit. From a statistical point of view, this is fortunate for it is the policy of the Michigan Children's Aid Society to place children awaiting adoption :5 in counties other than the ones where tzeir natural parents reside. Both the Catholic Social Service and the St. Vincent Home are under the same director. The Catholic Social Ser- vice serves as the intake office for the St. Vincent Home, but a separate report is submitted to the State Department for each agency. ( Under this heading are the Michigan Children's [0 ) State Facilities Institute, a child placing agency which also runs a home for diagnostic purposes, and the Boys Vocational School and Girls' Training School, which are institutions for de- linquent children. Only children who have been committed by the juvenile court may be received for care by the (0 e -20- state facilities. On admission, the child becomes a ward of the state. For the Michigan Children's Institute, chil- dren must be under 14 years of age at the time of commit- ment, and for the Boys' Vocational School and the Girls' Training School over 12 and under 17 years. However, a child under 17 years may be committed temporarily to the Eichigan Children's nstitute for purposes of observation. Such a child remains the ward of the court and so may be reported to the State Department by both the court and the Michigan Children's Institute. Boys and girls released on parole from the two training schools remain state wards until they attain the H) a e o 19 ears, or are officially discharged from the (n <4 schools. If they are returned to their own homes or to the care of relatives they come under the supervision of the county welfare agent of the juvenile court for the period that they are state wards. If it is impossible or unwise to return them to their own families, they may be placed in foster homes. For the boys, these homes are procured by the county children's workers, and for the girls by the Richigan Children's Institute. After place- ment these children come under the supervision of the above- named services, but they are still state wards and the in- stitutions are responsible for providing for their care. The parolees of the Girls Training School are but a small part of the foster placements made by the Michigan “0"" Children's Institute, which ha.s an extensive program serving the whole state. Lhe other st? te facilities are, lii' :ewis for the use of the whole state. (3) Juvenile Court The Juvenile Division of the Probate Court, generally known as the juvenile court, is an important child welfare agency. It, has exclusive original jurisdiction in proceedings concerning any ch ild under seventeen found within the county wr c has viola ted any law or ordinance, who is a runaway or disobedient, who has immoral associates or frequents premises used for illegal purposes, who is an habitual truant, or who is an idler.“ It also exercises jurisdiction in proceedings concerning children under 17 years of age found within the county, (1) w“hose parent or other person legally respon nsible for the ca re and maintenance of such child, when able to do so, neglects or refuses to provide proper or necessary support, education as required by law, medical, surgical or other care necessary for his health, morals or well- being, or who is abandoned oy his parents, guardian or other custodian, or who is otherwise with- out proper custody or gua rdianship; or (2) inose home or environment, by reason of neglect, cruelty, drunkenness, criminality or depravity on the part of a parent, guardian or other custodian, is an unfit place for such child to live in, or whose mother is unmarried and without ade qu date piovision for car and supp ort.23 The juvenile court also has jurisdiction over children under 22 Maxine B. Virtue, Bas ic Structure of Children's Services in Kich pan, American Judicature Society, Ann Arbor, 1953, p. 112 23 w hie Probate Code, Chapter XII-A, Section 2 (b). 19 years of age waived to it by a court in chancery in cases of divorce proceedings, and concurrent Jurisdiction with the circuit court over children between the ages of 17 and 19 who have committed minor offenses. In addition to its judicial function, the Juvenile court provides foster care service for some of the children whose cases it adjudicates. These ases are only a sm ll 3“.) portion of the great volume which the court handles. All cases coming before the court are reported to the State De— partment. In Ingham County the juvenile court has offices in Lansing and hason, and it is served by a staff of six work- ers excluding the probate judge. This staff, which con- prises a county agent, two assistant coun y agents and three probation officers, is responsible, among other things, for obtaining and supervising foster homes for dependent, neglected and delinquent children in the cus- -’. ’1‘ tody of the court. As expla1ned in Chapter II, the Ingnam c+ County court provides fos or care for children from Inghan County only. It also runs a detention hone in hason in which some children awaiting court action are kept. (4) Independent Boarding Homes Many parents who find it impossible to provide a home for their children make their own arrangements for placins their children in foster care. The independent V U) boarding homes which they use, like the agency homo , have -23- to be licensed and to report the ch ldren in their care to the State Department at the time of admission and at re— moval. In many cases, parents require only day care homes and these are almost never provided by the private e-encies in Michigal. Most of tne independent boarding homes are day care how es. (5) County Children’s Services One of the major functions of the county children's services is studying independent boarding homes for licens— ing. In addition, these services, which are provide by the State Department of Socie l Nelf re, helpo par rents and the Boys' Vocational School 'n finding foster homes for children. County children' s workers usually give casework service to the children and foster parents in the homes they have recommended and report these cases to the St: te Department. In compiling data on the children in foster c- are, cases reported by the county children's workers are included. «'0’ CHAPTER IV TL -EPORTIIG SiSTEM The statute requiring child welfare agencies to be licensed and to report to the State Department was enact- ed for the purpose of regulating and supervising the care and placement of minor children. By these means standards are established and information is available for making evaluations, offering onsultation and developing plans. Reporting is considered to be almost as important as li- censing for achieving this purp se. The Joint Legislative Committee referred to in Chapter I, made this clear When they recommended that even the independent boarding homes, which formerly had only to be licensed, should also be re— quired to report to the State Department?!1L Forms for reporting are furnished by the State De- partment in accordance with the statute.25 But the re- ports fulfill different functions for the different ser- vices and therefore are not uniform. With regard to the private agencies, the reports are used mainly for gauging the work of the agencies and for information to aid con- sultation. The state facilities and the county children's 24 Joint Legislative Committee to Study Foster Care, op. cit., p. 14. This recommendation was adopted in 1951. 25 Act 47, op. cit., Section 4. -25- services are administered by the State Department and so their records are kept merely for the sake of accounting. The Juvenile court reporting, which began in 1945, is more a service to the courts than to the State Department. It represents the only coordinated report of all the juvenile courts in the state, and the system of collecting and re- cording the reports was developed in collaboration with the Michigan Probate Judges' Association. Only of recent origin, the reports required by the independent boarding homes are much less complete than those required of the other services. Certain items are deliberately omitted from the report blanks for these homes, because it is felt that the independent boarding home parents ought not, or would not be in a position, to obtain the desired infor- mation. ReportingyBlanks For the child placing agencies and child caring institutions and the Michiga Children's Institute, three types of blanks are used — an admission card (CC-l), a notice of re-admission (CC—2) and a notice of discharge (CC-8). In addition, an annual list of all cases "is pre- pared in duplicate at the end of the calendar year by the State Department of Social Welfare from the above cards and sent to the agency for checkind."2O his list is sent 26 State of Michigan, Department of Social Welfare, Child Caring Institutions and Child Placing Agencies, pp. cit., p. 28. to be reviewed for completeness and accuracy, and a COpy is returned to the State Department. Kuch the same procedure and tyne of fo ms are used '3 for receiving reports from the state training schools, the Boys' Vocational School and the Girls' Training School. For these schools, there also are a notice of admission (Bil-3), a notice of readn iission, desi nat ed Wlotice of Return to Institution' (SW-8) and a notice of discharge (sw-9). In addition, a notice of placement (SW-4) for children paroled from the schools but still state wards, and a notice of transfer (SN-7) for children temporarily placed in another institution, are used. An annual list is sent to the schools for checking at the end of each calendar year. The Juvenile court submits a Face Sheet and Statis- tical Report (JC-l) on initial contact with each case after a preliminary investi Mi01 las been made, but before the case has been officially determined. After the case has been closed, the court may notify the State Department through a notice of closure (JG-8) or through a copy of its own court order. In practice, all courts use the JC-l form for reporting official cases on initial contact aid some for report ing unofficial cases also. Notification of the disposition of the cases, either by court order or notice of closure, is not done by all the courts despite the re- com::endetions of the "Reference Guide for Kichifnn JuV‘ni le -27- Court Reporting" adopted in 1944 by tie Probate Judgcs' Association. The annual list prepared by the State De- partment at the close of each calendar year is thus of paramount importance in check n3 the accuracy of the records {‘1 s 9. Ci? (‘3 S 8 *3 ing information about the disposition of the cases. When it is remembered that the juvenile court handles more cases (in quantity and variety) than any other of the re— porting sources, the usefulness of the annual list, from the viewpoint of statistical accuracy, is greatly magnified. The independent boarding homes report on the Board- ing Home Record form (EH-3). Wh n the foster child first enters the home, the boarding parent is required to fill out Section One of this form and to send a copy to the State fication when the H. Department. Section Two is used as not child is removed. As each boarding home is a separate unit handling usually only one or two cases, an annual list is not sent to these homes. Very often the boarding parents fail to notify the State Department when they have given up caring for a child. Thus, information about the chil- dren served by this facility is somewhat inadequate and sometimes has to be supplemented with data from other sources.28 The county children's services report on the Chil- dren's Service Face Sheet and Statistical Report form (CD-l4). 28 From the boarding home unit of the State Depart- ment and the children‘s workers who carry out boardin; hem studies for licensing. -23- A monthly list is sent out to the children's workers to aid them in checking the accuracy of their reports. The annual report of the county children's services is prepared on a fiscal year basis in order to avoid the strain of having to prepare all the reports at the same time. However, since monthly statistics from the children's workers are rea‘ily available and the volume of c ses handled by these workers m t in figures that would syn- {‘3 0‘ is not great, it is easy to o chronize with those of the other reports. This reporting system is in the process of being revised. CHAPTER V HETHOD OF RESEARCH With the aid of IEH machines the names of all the children from Ingham County reported by the child welfare services to the State Department were listed in alphabetical order. Other characteristics of the children taken from the records were also listed. These included the sex, race,birth date (by month and year) of each child. In or- der to facilitate identification of the various children and to provide information about the services they received, data pertaining to the familial circumstances and where- abouts of each child as well as to the agencies offering service were also included in the list. As a result, it was easy to observe by inspection the cases where a child's name appeared more than once on the list. These cases. were further examined to see whether or not the duplica- tion occurred in connection with foster care service. Frequent reference was made to the reports and re— cords in search of further identifying evidence. This pro- cedure was necessary in sorting out the duplications in foster care, because the State Department's records are kept according to agency, and some of the child welfare agencies provide other services for children in addition to foster care. It was therefore possible for a child to be reported several times without being counted twice as being in foster care. Certain precautions were necessary. It had to be borne in mind continually that the study was not about children who had received foster care services from more lan one source, but rather about the cases of children reported as being in foster care more than once during the year. Care had to be taken to check the status of each case at the end of l 53, at closure during the year, if this was done, and at the end of 1954, if necessary. The method used in taking the count was responsible for these measures. For each type of service a count of the number of children in foster care is made at the end of the year. At that time the total of the previous year is taken, the cases opened during the year are added and the cases closed are deducted. The resulting figure is regarded as the total number of cases of foster care for the year under consideration. Allowance had to be made for Special cases. A child who has been admitted to one of the state institu- tions from Inghah County may be placed in another county when released on parole from the institution. In such case, the records of the juvenile court in the county of place- ment had to be examined for information about he whereabouts of the child. The records of the private agencies and in- stitutions in other counties had already been scrutinized -31- for cases of children from Inghan County before the list was prepared. By these means, all the duplications in foster care in -Ing 11am County were isolated. Information leading to the reasons for each duplication was then collected from the records of the State Depar ment as well as from interviews with the executives of the agencies implicated. It was necessary to know the agencies that were active in the duplications, the services which they provided and their relationships with other participating agencies. After these details were assembled, a frame of reference for de- termining the reasons for the duplications was needed. For this purpose, wt .in hypotheses were formulated. Guiding Hypotheses The foster care duplications were conceived as re- sulting from the interaction of three basic factors, viz., the records, the services 3nd the children. From this orientation, the three following hypotheses were prepared to guide the search for reasons for the duplications: l) The duplications in the records are produced by the system for receiving and recording reports employed by the State De artme out; 2) The duplications are produced by th ad uinistrative and professional practices of the age encies p rev viding the foster care services; 3) The duplications are produced by the individual needs and familial circumstances of the children receiving the foster care services Method of Classification There is an element of arbitrariness in most classi- fications of social phenomena. As a rule, the forces aff ect- in: them intera ct with each other to such an extent that it is mpossible to arrange the data in discrete groups. It is agreed that the reasons for the duplications are interrelated and cannot be sep narsted into mutually ex- clusive categories. Certainly, all of the foster care services were es ablished to provide for the needs of chil- dren who do not have homes or whose homes are considered un sui itable or in. decuate. Thus, the various agency prac- tices and relationships which have developed are, directly or indirectly, attributable to these needs. It is not the intention of th above listed hypotheses to regard the agency practices as distinct from the needs of children. Nevertheless, the ca tegoriz in3 implicit in the hypotheses is justifiable if the situation responsible for the idea of the study is kept in view - the adminis— tra tiv e need for an unduplicated count of the children in foster care. Of the three component factors affecting the duplications, the one mos t under tr e control of the State Department is the records he system of recordin3 can be changed in any desired way without very much trou- ble. If, for example, the first hypothesis were proved to be the only cause for the duplicati ions then all that has to be done to achieve an unduplicated count would -35- to revise the procedures for receiving and recording the reports. There is no reason to believe til at th is is im- pos ssible. It is also conceivable that the duplica ions may be prevented oy chan3in3 the recordings ystem even th ou3h there may be other contributing factors besides the report- ing system responsible for the duplications. The two other factors assumed to be producin3 the duplications — th services and the children - are less controllable. Even between these, however, it is possible to m hie some evaluation from the standpoint of ability to be men ified for th purpose of attaining an unduplicated (D count. Surely, the foster care services are more subject to hur1an control the n the children in re ce eipt of these services. Thus, in grouping the reasons for the duplications, it was decided to con side r first the records, then the services and last the children. The cases were examined in order to fi; ad out wMiet er the main reason for duplication could be attributed to the system of receiving and record- ing reports. In such cases, other contributin3 reasons were not investigated. The same procedure w as repeated in dealin3 with the renw1inin3 cases. In this instance, however, the cases sought were t‘ose in which the main reason for duplication could be attributed to the foster care services. After these cases were isolated, all the remaining cases automatically were assigned to the cate3cry -34- of duplications produced by the needs and circumstances of the children. This approach could hardly be approved if the A focus of the study were on the foster care services. It ‘Jo would have been important n such case to evaluate all the factors operating in each 0 { -se in which more than one agen- ‘ I this study, however, is to ob- I» 4, cy gave service. The aim o tain information havin3 a bearing on unduplicatin3 the count. It is felt that the suggested method of classify- ing the reasons for the duplications indicates all the conditions affecting the duplications. Any device for unduplicatin3 the count must take into account all these conditions. Koreover, the value of the study is not in pointing out the distribution of the various conditions producing the duplications, but in showin3 what these conditions are. It has already been mentioned that the validity of using the experience from Ingham County for projecting conditions in other parts of the state is subject to question. CHAPTER VI THE FINDINGS The number of reports submitted to the State De- partment by the child welfare services in connection with the children from Ingham County whom they served totalled 1,689. There were 215 duplications among these reports, making the unduplicated count of all the children reported 1,406. Of this latter number 882, less than two-thirds, were children in foster care. These 882 children were reported 1,031 times because there were 126 duplications in the foster care records. The duplications constituted a little more than 14 per cent, exactly one out of every seven, of the foster care population, just one per cent less than the 15 per cent of the duplications in the full list of reports.29 Only the 126 duplications in the foster care re- cords come within the purview of this study. The 126 cases were reported 276 times, or 2.2 times each. Of the duplications, 103 refer to children who were reported twice, and 22 to children reported three times. The name of one child appeared four times in the records.30 29 See Table A., Appendix, P- 73. 30 See Table 3., Appendix, p. 73. -35- Services Active in Duplications C“ each of the five foster care services described in Chapter IV was implicated in some of the cases of du- plication. As shown in Table 1 on page 37, the private agencies were participants in more of the duplications than any other type of service. The 93 cases in which they were active comprised a little less than 75 per cent of the duplications. In the Opposite position were the County Children's Services. They were active in only 10 cases, about 8 per cent of the total number of duplications. How- ever, a glance at Table 2 on page 38 reveals that these 10 cases constituted almost one-third of all the children receiving attention in foster homes from this service. The corresponding proportion for the independent boarding home program, which was implicated in 17 cases of duplication, was one out of fourteen. (1) Private Agencies and Independent Boarding Homes As in the case of the number of duplications, the private agencies led the field with respect to the pro- portion of duplications in their total caseload. The 93 duplications Which they served represented 35 per cent of the number of children in foster care in their clientele. It has already been mentioned that only 7 per cent (one out of fourteen) of the cases reported by the independent boarding home program consisted of duplications. That the -‘7- Table 1. Participation of Foster Care Services in Duplications Showing Number of Cases and Times Reported Cases of Duplication FOSTER CARE SERVICES Per Cent Times Average fiumber of Total Reported Times Cases Reported (l) (2) (3) (4) Total .... (126)3 _LlOO)b 276 {2.21 1. Private Agencies 93 73.8 157 1.7 2. State Facilities 24 19.0 24 1.0 3. Juvenile Court E6 44.4 56 1.0 4. Independent Board- ing Homes 17 13.5 27 1.6 5. County Children's Services 10 7.9 12 1.2 “ The total of this column exceeds the number of duplications because in many cases more than one service is involved. D Similarly, the total of this column exceeds 100 per cent. I k»! CD I Table 2. Per Cent of Duplications in Cases Reported Duplications Type of Total Foster Care Cases Per Cent Services Reported Number For Each Type of Case £3) A [.1 K2 A h) V 0’ Total .... (882)8 (126) 14.3 1. Private Agencies 266 93 35.0 2. State Facilities 104 24 23.1 3. Juvenile Court 325 56 17.2 4. Independent :oarding Homes 237 17 7.2 5. County Children's Services 33 10 30.3 a The total in this column exceeds the number of cases reported because of the duplications. b The total in this column exceeds the number of duplications because in many cases more than one service is involved in the duplication. -39- private agencies had proportionally five times as many duplications as the independent boarding homes is somewhat surprising, especially since the number of children in the care of each of the two services was nearly the same. The private agencies served 266 children and the independent boarding homes 237. When the professional methods employed by the private agencies is contrasted with the haphazard practices of some of the independent boarding homes, the results of the two types of services, insofar as the du- plications in the records indicate, certainly need explan- ation. It may be pointed out, in the first place, that the reporting by the independent boarding homes in Ingham County seems to be rather incomplete and consequently an appreciable number of their cases never get into the re- cords of the State Department. The private agencies, on the other hand, report all their cases, including those with which the contact is very brief, and many of their Cases are difficult ones, often involving emotionally disturbed children with parents who are no less maladjusted. Secondly, most of the parents who make independent arrange- ments for the care of their children require such care only for that period of the day when they are out to work. Thus, the number of children reported in day care homes in the independent boarding hove program is 168, over 71 per cent . . . 2 of the total number of children served by the program./1 ? o 21 See Table 0., Appendix, p. 74. -40- On the contrary, all of the children whose foster care was supervised by the private agencies were in full—time foster homes or in chil Lren‘s institutions. 32 Further, 38 of the duplications in the records for the private agencies were caused solely by the administrative arrange- ment between the Catholic Social Service and the St. Vincent Home for Children, referred to in Chapter III, whereby the former agency acts as intake office for the latter and sometimes provides casework help to children who are in the institution. Since both agencies report all cases in W1ic1 they have in any way p: rticipated, each child admitted to the St. Vincent Home is reported twice. If the 38 cases in question were deducted from the duplications in the re- cords of the private agencies, the remaining figure would constitute about 24 per cent of the caseload of these agen- cies. This is still a much higr er per cent th en th at for the boarding home program The number of children in full-time care in the independent boarding home program is 67. Seven, just a little more than one out of every ten, of these children were reported more than once. It is to some extent unfair to compare this small group with the large number of chil- dren in agency care. Eevertheless, even if the necessary 1 allowances were made, the result would still show a h g1er '2 ’2 See page 23. Day care homes are almost never provided by private agencies in Michigan. -41- per cent of duplications among the private agency cases. It would be prudent to remember that duplication does not indicate whether or not service was effective. 11 it shows is the number of agencies playing responsible roles in offering service to the child in foster care.33 The fact that there are more duplications in the cases of the private agencies than of the independent boarding homes suggests that children in the care of private agencies are likely to receive the services of more resources than chil- dren in the care of the independent boarding homes. What this signifies is a fit subject for another investigation. It may be that the needs of such children are greater than those of children in the independent boarding home program. Or, it may suggest that there is some stigma attached to agency service preventing 'self-respecting' persons from using such service; thus, only the worst cases are re- ferred to the agencies. Several other interesting hypo- .. theses mav CG formulated. (2) Interagency articipation Table 3 on page 42 shows the number of cases in which the various services participated with each other. The private agencies were active in duplications with each of )3 In this study a service is considered to be foster care service only if it has main responsibility, either legally or Voluntarily obtained, for the care of the child. Otherwise, this service is regarded as a com- munity resource. -42- Table 3. articipation of Services with Each Other in Duplications, by Cases Type of Foster Care Service Type of Foster Care Service Priv— State Ju- Ind. Chil- Total ate Fac- ven- Board dren Agen- ili- ile n3 Ser- cies ties Court Homes vices (1) £2) ( ) (4) (5) (5) k)! I m m 51 r— ‘ n 1 T0138]. 9 o o o o o o (126) 93 70 15b 110 —\ J 1. Private 1gencies 959 (42) 6 36 5 6 2. State Facilities 250 6 (o) 19 o o 3. Juvenile Court 57b 76 19 (o) o 2 4. Independent Board- k in: Homes 18“ 5 O O (10) 3 5. County Children' b Services 11 6 o 2 5 (o) a Includes 2 cases reported by 3 different services. 0 Includes 1 case reported by 3 different services. -43- the other services. he other type of service had relations with all of the other services. The largest number of re- lationships of the private agencies was with other private agencies, but there was also considerable participation with the juvenile court. Thirty-six of the 93 duplications in the caseloads of the private agencies involved the ju- venile court, which was itself active in 21 other dupli- cations, 19 with the state facilities and 2 with the county children's services. (3) The Juvenile Court The importance of the legal function in foster care is clearly illustrated. Active in 56 cases of du- plication, the court dealt with 325 children in foster care, a larger number than any other service.34 As shown in Table 4 on page 44, the various types of services ren- dered by the court for children in foster care were well demonstrated in the duplications. These services included providinq funds, awarding legal custody, making placements and aftercare supervision of children. Agency Relations Except for some of the St. Vincent Home cases, -there were never more than two agencies active at the same time in any case. It wa therefore possible to present ‘ the duplications as a series of 'relationships', eacn 34 See Table 2, p. 38. -44- Table 4. Participation of Juvenile Court in Cases ‘ of Duplication Relationships Cases TOtal 000.... 5'6 1. Funds ............................ 23 With Private Institutions .... 22 With Private Agencies ........ l 2. custOC13f .0...OOIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 18 With Private Agencies ........ l 'w’i th 32 . C . I . . With Private Institutions .... 5. Placefllents OCOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCOOOOO 9 Eli-til I.:.C.I. ...............C.. 4 With State Insti utions ...... 3 With County Children's Service 2 4. Aftercare Supervision ............. 6 With State Institutions ....... 6 -45- involving two agencies. Table 5 on page 46 shows these relationships, which numbered 150. The great majority of them (127) represented collaboration between the agen- cies, the others (23) represented a succession of service.35 All but two of the duplications involved the participation of two different types of services. In one of the two cases in which three different services were active, the worker in the county children's services program collabor- ated first with the independent boarding home and later with the private agency, when these resources offered ser- vice to the child. In the other case, the two later ser- vices, the juvenile court and the state institution, did not work with the case until the former resource, a private institution, had surrendered it. By far the most frequent type of relationship was that between the Catholic Social Service and the St. Vincent Home. As mentioned earlier, a great deal of unnecessary duplication occurred because the former agency performed for the latter a function which is usually undertaken by the same agency providing the service. This administrative arrangement is not under question, but it would seem that the Catholic Social Service cases tha were also reported by the St. Vincent Home should not be included in the foster care records. Throughout the studv, this anomaly 9 produced problems that had to be assessed before conclusions 33 See Table D, Append‘x, pm 75. 4F _ZI {I Table 5. Adency Relationships in Cases 4. L“, of Duplication Relationships Number Total ........ 150 1. Catholic Social Service (Intake) - St. Vincent Home (Care) .......... 56 2. Juvenile Court (Funds) — Private Institution (Care) ....... 22 5. Juvenile Court (Clstody) - Private Agency (Placement) ....... ll 4. Independent Boarding H me (Care) — Independent Boarding Home (Care).. 7 5. State Institution (Parole) - Juvenile Court (Supervision) ..... 6 6. Children's Services (Casework) - Private Agency (Placement) ....... 6 7. Juvenile Court (Custody) - , M.C. . (Observation) ............. 4 8. Juvenile Court (Placement) - E.C.I. (Placement) ............... 4 9. 3.0.1. (Funds) - Private Agency (Placement) ....... 4a 10. Independent Boarding Home (Care) - Private Agency (Placem~nt) ....... 4 11. Same Private Agency (Placement) Twice ........................... 4 12. Same Independent Boarding Home Care) Twice 3 13. Juvenile Court (Placement) - State Institution (Care) ......... 3 14. Juvenile Court (Custody) ~ Private Institution (Care) ....... 3 15. Independent Boarding Home (Care) Children's Services (Casework) ... 3 16. Private Institution (Care) ' Private Agency (Placement) ....... 2 l7. hildren's Services (Casework) Juvenile Court (Placement) ....... 2 lo. Same Children's Services (Casework) Twice' ........................... 2 19. Juvenile Court (Funds) - Private Agency (Placement) ....... l 20. Private Institution (Care) - State Institution (Care) ......... l 21. Private Institution (Care) - M.C.I. (Placement) .............. l 22. Private Agency (Placement) - Private Agency (Placement) ....... l This practice is beinr discontinued hv .I—A— -47- , could be dram.50 Ag EValuation It is possible to make an evaluation of the various agency relationships observed in the duplications, at least of those relationships representing collaboration between the services. The 23 cases in which the duplications re- sulted from a succession of service are really not subject to this type of appraisal. Even though the effect of the service may be considered good or bad in these cases, it seems unreasonable to evaluate relationsh‘ps which did not actually exist. The only connection between the agencies was the child in whom both agencies were interested. However, the 127 relationships representing col- laboration between the agencies do not merit this exemption. Criteria may be developed for evaluating these relationships. The two basic factors to be considered seem to be the chil- dren needing the service and the agencies offering the ser- vice. Were the relationships necessitated by the needs of the children? Were they in accordance with approved ad- ministrative and professional practice? 36 The Catholic social agencies in Michigan seem to be in the process of integration. In Detroit, the Catholic Family Center acts as intake office only for the St. Vincent's and Sarah Fisher Home for Children and the St. Anne's Home; In Grand Rapids, the Catholic Social Service Bureau is an amalgamation of the family and placement agency and the St. John's Home. The reports from the St. John's Home are not separated from the Catholic Social Service Bureau. It may be argued that the Catholic Social Service - St. Vincent Home relationship in Ingham County is not definite enough for a decision to be made as to which agency is respon ible for the care of the child in the ins itution. -48- All of the 127 relationships do not meet these riteria. As shown in Table 6 on page 49, if the 56 cases of Catholic Social Service-St. Vincent Home relationship are excluded, more thai half 01 the remaining 71 relation- ships are, in the opinion of the writer, not valid. Only 34 of the relationships are justifiable in that they were inevitable and were at the same time consistent with re- cognized administrative and professional practice. These 'valid‘ relationships comprised 18 cases in which legal custody was obtained in order to control the interference of difficult parents, or to have the problems of children diagnosed; 11 cases in which the county chil- dren's services offered a protective service until more adequate care was available; 5 cases which had to be com- mitted by the juvenile court to a state institution; and 2 cases in which a child was removed from a private insti- tution to a foster home for professional reasons. i The 37 relationships that were not considered valid included 27 cases in which funds were provided by public agencies (the juvenile court and the Michigan Children's Institute) to finance the care or placement of children by private agencies. This arrangement was considered un- .- economical because the public a encies had to maintain records of each of the cases concurrently with the private agencies. Had the cases been referred to a public agency instead, there would have been no need for duplicate -49- Table 6. EValuetion of Agency Relationships in Duplications Relationships Number Total ............ 150 l. Succession of Service ...................... 23 2. Catholic Social Service (Intake) - St. Vincent Home (Care) ............. 56 3. hot Valid ................................. 37 Juvenile Court (Funds) - Private Institution (Care) ........22 State Institution (Parole) - Juvenile Court (Supervision) ..... 6 Juvenile Court (Placement) - K.C.I. (Placement) ............... 4 r.c.I. (Funds) - Private Agency (Placement) ....... 4 Juvenile Court (Funds) - Private Agency (Placement) ....... l 4. Valid ..................................... 34 Juvenile Court (Custody) - Private Agency (Placement) ...... ll Children's Services (Casework) - Private Agency (Placement) ...... 6 Juvenile Court (Custody) - K.C.I. (Observation) ............ 4 Juvenile Court (Placement) - State Institution (Care) ........ 3 Juvenile Court (Custody) - Private Institution (Care) ...... 3 Independent Boarding Home (Care) - Children's Services (Casework) .. 3 Private Institution (Care) ~ Private Agency (Placement) ...... 2 Children's Services (Casework) - Juvenile Court (Placement) ...... 2 To be considered 'valid' a relationship must be (1) necessitated by the needs of the child, and (2) con- sistent with recognized administrative and professional practice. ‘r -50- -I accounting.3’ The remainirg 10 cases comprised 6 cases in which the juvenile court supervised parolees of the state institutions but both public agencies maintained re— cords of the child re;., and 4 cases in which the juvenile court placements were displaced by Kichigan Children's In- stitute placements. The 6 cases of juvenile court super- ' m4- unlicate ‘ vision violate the principle adva MC d above that records would be avoided if a public agency transferred care of a child to another public agency. As regards the 4 cases in which the court placements were superseded by Hichiga. Children's Institute placements, the court place- ments were made in the first place only because help from an Children's Institute was unavailable. Administra- tive exigencies delayed, perhaps marred, the giving of pro- per service. Reasors for Duplications Host of the reasons for the dup pli He tions, as illus- trated in Table 7 on page 51, have been attributed to the foster care services. This is a result of tile procedt ire utlined in Chapter V, which was strictly applied in de- termining the reasons. Another important factor in the classification of the reasons is the meanin ggiven to foster ca re service. 2 O “7 For example, after comm tting a child to a state institution, the juven” ie court's interest in the child ceases. 6, Table 7. Reasons for Duplications, by Relationships Reasons Relationships Total ...... 150 1. System of Recording ............ 53 a. Children's Services Cases .. 13 b. Court Custody Cases ........ 14 0. State Institution Cases .... 6 2. Foster Care Services ........... 96 a. Administrative Practices ... 56 b. Lack of Public Facilities ,. 27 c. Inadequacy of Service ...... 8 d. Professional Practice ...... 4 e. Competition for Service .... 1 3. Circumstances & Needs of Children 21 e. Familial Circumstances ..... 13 b. IndiVidual E‘s-886.8 O O O O O O O O O 0 O 8 The definition in Chapter II enumerates the various fac- ilities in which foster care is provided, but it does not al with the question of responsibility for such care. 11 determining the reasons for the duplications, this question could not be avoided. Rights and responsibilities regard- ing the child in foster care are often fragmented among a number of agents. Thus, ultimate responsibility for the child may rest with the court or a state institution, .hile main reSponsibility for his care38 may be delegated to an 5e 03, and at th same time the parent may still retain a few residual responsibilities. Further, altho 3h one agen- cy may be responsible for the care of the child, another agency may simultaneously be giving service to the child. Accordingly, it as decided that the agency having respon- sibility for th e care of tie child should be credited with providing the service. The other participating services have been regarded as conimu ity resources. However, there were still ca ses in which more than on agency shared the responsibility for the care of the child. (1) The Reporting System It is felt thzt the hildren reported ov the cour ty children's services should not be included in the count of the children in foster care. Tile dupl icc tior ns occurring in the y cases in which the inclusion of the children ‘ Q. t . . V In this sense, care is limited to proviSions nysical needs of the child. services reports in the records caused duplication}9 have therefore been considered to be p1 oduced by the reporting syste...4O The county children's services program is tech- nically not a foster care service, but rather a ceseworl: service available to children in foster care. The children's workers neither place children nasprovide care for them. They recommend boardin3 homes to parents and, in carrying out such of their duties as constitute a protective service, they offer casework service to children in boardin3 homes, to their parents and to the boarding home parents. But t‘ mi service does not enta il responsib oility for the care or place- ment. Further, each child in foster care who is served by a children's worker ou3ht to be reported by the boarding home parent or aicncy responsible for his care or placement. h fact that only one- third of these cases is reported41 does not nullify the argum ent that the children's services ca ses \N V) a. ease of duplications, but were involved in 13 re in t-e sense described on pa3e 43). In 9 of tt1e i0 09 ses 1ere would not have been buolicttion if the children's ser- ices reports hed been omitted from the foster care records. 40 Since the State Department does not prepare a comprehensive total of the children in foster care, it may be argued that the situation repudiated above does not exist. however, the children's services cases are re33.rded as part of the foster care population and if a total of this popula- tion were to be estimated, the children's services cases would be included in the count. Indeed, all of the duplica- tions being studied are those which would occur if a compre- hensive total of the children in foster care were computed by addin3 t03ether all the cases reported by the 5 different services ”enerc lly cozsidered to be foster ca re services. The county cliild n 's services narti ipat 1"“ ...:b 41 See Table 2, p. 38. sheuld iot be incorporated in the foster care records. In 3ivin3 service to a child in an independent boardin3 home, the children's worker is recuired to see that the home is licensed, if licensable, and that the foster parent senls in a report to the State Department on a EH-S form H f tke home is not licensable, it is the worker's respon- sibility to have the child removed to a more suitable place. There would be duplication every time a'chillren's services case is counted if this procedure were followed. According— ly,t e13 relationships in which the children's workers participated have been accounted a3ainst the reportile system. However, in the present state of affairs, it is per- -dvisable to continue includin3 the children's servic s .5 9 d U) {3 cases in the foster ce re records if a more com aplete pic- ture of the volume of the foster care population is re- quired. There is little doubt that many of the foster care cases are not reported, and the duelications which the in- clusion of the childr-n's services cases produce ar neces- 0') ar ly few because of the small number of children's services cases. The 14 ca ses in which private a3encies obtained custouy 0: children from the juvenile court in order to establish stable, le3ally def incd relationslin" with parents need not have produced duplications if the reports from the court re3ardin n3 these children were excluded from the foster care records. Provided that parental rights have been re- -55- stricted, the court maintains an interest in the child and reports him as an active case. But such interest does not include responsibility for his care and, according to the point of view expressed earlier, is not foster care service. Hence, Juvenile court cases of children in the legal custody of private a3encies ou3ht not to be counted with the foster Also credited to the reporting system were 6 cases of duplication due to the inclusion of reports received from both the Juvenile court and the state institutions in connection with children released on parole from the in- stitutions and placed in foster homes supervised by the court!"2 The reasons whysnunichildren should be reported twice do not seem to be valid. When a child is committed to a state institution by the court, he ceases to be a ward of the court, but instead becomes a state ward. It should be possible for the situation to operate in reverse. On release from the state institution the child should become the ward of the court. Both public agencies should not con- tinue reportin3 the same child for the years that he may be on parole. To modify this situation would require the amendment 42 If directly placed in a foster home from the state institution, the parolee is supervised by the county children's worker (if a boy) or by the Michi3an Children's Institute (if a girl). However, parolees returned to their own homes come under the supervision of the Juvenile court, through the county welfare a3ent, and may afterwards be placed in a fos- ter home by the court. O a? I U] (A l of the law. In the present circumstances, the reports sub- mitted by tic state institutions should be excluded from the foster care records. As was pointed out in connection with the children's services cases, it is incorrect to re- gard service to a Child as foster care service unless it entails responsibility for the care of the CflilC. In pro- viding aftercare supervision for state wards the Juvenile court accepts the ms in responsibility for the care of the children and consecuen tly is t7::e resource really offering the foster care service.43 Hence, only the reports sub- mitted to the State Department by the Juvenile court snould be included in the foster care records. (2) The Foster Care Services By far the majority of the duplications have been regarded as resulting from the practices of the foster care (‘3 rvices Hinety-six of the 150 agency rela .tio ips in the cases of duplication have been so classified. In Table 8 on page 57 the reasons for the duplications in this cate- gory are given in detail. They include Administrative Practices, La k of Public Facilities, Inadequscy of Service 4’ The relationship between the Juvenile court and the state institution regarding responsibility for parolees of the institution is not clearly defined in the lcw. Ultimate re- sponsibility for the paroles res ts with the i;stitution, but this responsibility is liznited to determining the lega status of the child. T39 juvenile court is not permitted to dis- charge the paroles nor (if he is over 15 years old and commits a felony) to twaive jurisdiction of his case to the circuit court. But file Juvenile court is resconsib is for his care, including the selection of the type of ca re, the prov vis ion of funds on; returning him to the inst_tution. a, T able 8. Relationships Causing Duplications Attributed -57- to Foster Care Services Agency Relationships Number Total ....... 96 1. Administrative Practices .... ..... ...... 56 a. Catholic Social Service (Intake) - St. Vincent Home (Care) ........ 56 2. Lack of Public Facilities .............. 27 a. Juvenile Court (Funds) - Private Institution (Care) ..... 2 1Do bioCoIo (FdndS) — Private Agency (Placement) ..... 4 l l‘.) c. Juvenile Court (Funds) — Private Agency (Placement) ..... Inadequacy of Service .................. a. Independent Boarding Home (Care) - Private Agency(Placenent) ...... 4 b. Juvenile Court (Placement) - I‘ioCoIo (Placement) 0000000000000 Professional Practice .................. a. Private Institution (Care) - Private Agency (Placement) ..... 2 b. Private Institution (Care) — M.C.I. (Placement) ............. l 0. Private Agency (Placement) - Private Agency Branch(Placement) 1 Competition for Service ................ a. Private Agency (Placement) - Private Agency (Placement) ..... l O) I U1 0) I Professional Practice and Compe eti ion for Service. host of the responsibility for these duplications r-4 '13. C') .5 been attributed to the special administrative prac- tices employed by some of the services. The Catholic I.) SOCiml Ser vice-St. Vincent dome relationship, occurring in 6 instances, was the source of these duplications. Eothing U1 further need be said of this relationship. The cases subsumed under the Leadinj, Lz2c1: of Public Facilities, are those in which either the Juvenile court or the Kichigan Children's Institute provided funds for the placement or institutional care of their charges by private agencies. It is not within the scope of this study to dis- cuss the tenuous question of the exlenditure of public funds by private agencies. However, it seems uieconomical for tw asencies to se engaged in providing a service that can be and is generally, performed by one. The mere practice of keeping two sets of records seems cumbrous. Whether this situation crn be remedied at the pre- J. 1' in is another matter. The 'chifan Children's In- (F U) (D ¢¢L t itu te hes already discontinued the practice, but the Ju— m (I- venile cour which deals with a much larger section of the foster care population may not be in a position to end the plan with such dispatch. Under 'Inadequacy of Service' have been listed the cases in which the service provided by he resource was re- ‘ placed by similar service of repttedly superior eu lity from I K” \O I another resource. In every instance, the latter resource was used because the former could not provide adequately 4'0 for the case. Four or 1 , the cases were independent boarding home placements that were superseded oy private a gency placements, and a similar number involved juvenile court placements that were transferred to the care of the Kichigan hildren's Institute. In both examples, it is felt, the du— plication could have been avoi led if the children were pro- perly placed from the start. In four cases the rea2son for duplication was r garded as being due to standard professional practice. Three of these cases represented the removal of a Child from an in- stitution nto a foster home as a ste. in tue process of re- turning his: to his own home, or preparir .3 him for adoption. (The other was an adoptive placement entailing the removal of a child from the county of his atural parents and pre- paring him for adoption in another count‘. These practices were both consistent with reCOfnized professional principles. It is the general feeling that institutional care, though necesss r3 in some cases, should not constitute permanent O U (D w o d d ’- l o 0 L2" l.J I“! d. EfIOTtS should be made to help the .'_. ‘ P. H. 11d to al‘ust to normal family living, and so a chili is as a rule not kept for a prolonged period in an ir sti tution, but is removed to a foster hate as he becomes better adjust- ed. As reg ards adoption, many agenCies, because of the le,al and emotional implications, do not place children for {w adoption in the same district where the nzzturhl parents eside. Only one case gave evidence of a competition be- tween e3eLcies -or service. In this case, a lar3e Slare of responsibilitv for the duplication should be placed on the parents f the child who were in conflict. However, it seemed that the s3encies f3 iled to get to3ether for a while, thus allowing themselves to be used as a battle- ground for parental warfare. (3) Problems with Families All of the cases of cupl icetion could not e clas- sified as resulting from the reporting system and the prac- tices emplo3ed bv the fester care services. It is felt that the familial circumstances an the indiViduel needs of the children necessitated 21 of the s3enc3; relationships producing duplication. In the majority of these situations the parents of the children presented the problems ex- perienced in providing foster care. In t}-is cute e30 ry have oeen include d cases in whicn the parent for his own reasons removed his child from one boarding home and placed him in another; and cases where the parent removed his chill from an independent or agency home for the summer and returned him in the autumn when school began again. Foster care a encies csnno ot afford to tree t li3htly their reletionsliips with peren its. Children do not, as a rule, give up their parents, even When they hate then. Thus, (‘1 Table 9. Relationships Causing Duplications Attributed to Circumstances and Needs of Children Agency Relationships Number l. TOtBJl 0.0.0.0000. Familial Circumstances ................. a. Independent E arding Home (Care) - Independent Boardin: Home (Care) 7 b. Same Independent Boarding Home (Cara Twice ...................... 0. Private Agency (Placement) T‘Vice ......‘00............. Individual Eeeds ................ a. Juvenile Court (Custody) — K.C.I. (Observation) ........ b. Juvenile Court (Placement) State Institution (Care) .... c. Private Institution (Care) — State Institution (Care) .... F’ kfl up 21 13 f? -62.. a3encies must be prepared to put up withL st of the whims There were cases served by more than one a3eLC' in (d which the main reason for duplication was un doubtedl 3' the needs of the children. When children show signs of ments def icier ecy or severe emotional disturbance, the juvenile court usually refers hem to the local ch ld 3uid ance clinic for diagnosis oefore disposing of their cases. However, in cases in which an ev: hlu:3tion is co onsidered advisable before Ilacemeht awav from the'r pasents, children are usually re- L) ferred to the Lic1i3an Children' 8 Institute dia3nostic cen- ter, though still in the court's custody. Other children '! . ,1. w th stron3 delin uent habits which msLe them uitnan a3eable .Q in a ioster home or children's institution are often taxed to the court in order to be CORY. tted to state institution. 9: It may be argued that t1e latter 3roup of children should have been sent to the state ins itution in the first |._Jc place; or perhaps, that t,bl U) U. "3 fl \ ..~ 4. 1,, .lacenent mi3nt have (D obviated re efe rel to a st (‘0 ts institution if the cases were properly dis3nosed. These reasons do not seem to be very subs ttnt ial, in view of t1e unpredictable nature of most problem 0: ildren. The duplications caused by the referral of chil- dren to the Michigan Children's Institute by the juvenile court were not credited to the reportinc system, because in res to 61, be 3t of which, it is felt, can be avoide -03- these cases the care of the child was onlv the tenporary U ponsibility of the Institute. This care would revert hown in Table 9 on pa3e m the court after dia3nosis. As only 8 of the 150 relationships have been considered to caused by the needs of children. This is a Consequence the ar3le from which the re stionships are observed. duplications are the result of a3ency relationships, .41 1 I '4‘ by chan3es in if“ CHEPTER VII C NCL SIGNS The duplications in the records tell a fascinatin3 story about the foster care services. Tley are objective evidence of the relationships made by 8£ encies in carryin3 out the services for which hey were es t; bl shed. These relationships me y be e2: anined, as has been attempted in this study, from various standpoints. For the purposes of pla.n- ninr and supervision tb e result of such examination are However, this study has been given a bias which must be kept in view. One of the main reasons for under- takin3 it was to throw li3ht on a method for obtaining an unduplicated count of the children in foster care. what conditior s must be observed in achievinr such a count? It ‘ -. has been shown that ordy some of the dualications may oe at Mr ibuted to the reporting system - those resultin3 from the inclusion of certa.in reports in the foster care records. In this 3roup are the 9 children's services cases, the 14 cases in wlich the juvenile court awarded le3al custody of the child to a private agency and the 6 cases in which the court supervised parolees of the state institutions. 1m what of the remainin3 97 cases? These have re- sulted from the practices employed by the To ster cs re service s in resp nse to adiinistrative limitations of funds, personnel and facilities, to professional theory and to the stecial ne=ls and circumstances of the children in need of foster 0 re. It is not possible to eliminate uplications from the sta ti stician' s de Perhaps (I p; thes a central authority possessin: absolute control over all the services could so order the administering of foster care as to prevent all the duplications. To effect such centralization for the ss.ke of eliminating he duplications would be to ma 3nify the roblem of duplication far beyond its deserts. The focus of foster care is the child, not the records. t would be a violation of accepted pro- fessional and administrative principles to impose a central cent 01 over the foster care services. Consequently, in look’ n3 for a way of obtaining an unduplicated count, one must turn in other directions than to czsn3in3 the system of administering foster care services. This does not mean that some modification of agency practices is not worthwhile. Tailo 6 on page 49 clearly illustrates this need. Kore of the a3ency relationships seem to ba undesirable than to so valid. It must there- fore be concluded that the number of duplications would be greatly reduced if more desirable administrative con- dfii 101 s prevailed. But there will still remain a fair um- ber to be considered, and the aim of unduplicatinr is to obtnin a figure that is free of all duplications. .«g ..I It he 8 been shown that changes in the record (3 O m A f. in the f ster care services do not provide the answer to the problem of duplication. And surely, the needs and cir- umstances of the children in care are not subject to ar— bitrary control and modification by the State Department. Therefore, one must seek a device that unduplicateswthe recor as after the reports from the foster care services have been received. To attain this it must be possible to iden- tify all the children re Hport ed. Is the information currently obtained from the re- port blanks prep: red by the Sta 0 Department sufficient to identify each child in foster care? This seems to be so. Each of the blanks calls for the name 01 the child, his birthda te, sex, race an e. *5 (D I...) I... ' } ‘-o O C CO (‘3 w M F. ’..J P. (‘3 C",- H O :3 O H a, (D 1'3 s (D of his father and mother as well as that of the person possessin3 legal custody are also solicited. Ioreover, information concerni n3 referral to the agency offering ser— vice - the ate of admission, source of referral (n6 reason for referral - is requested. With all these data relsti Li (a to the caaracteristics anl circumstances of th child H 4. b (i) is possible to iientifv each child and to detect each case +5 0 duplication. Further, the reports from some of the ser- vices contain even more details than those listed a‘eove.44 It would seem that a method could be devised 1,; LL} ' rill reports e: cept th EH—B i 1e child and the :narital status of hi .0 -57- the records without requesting more information from the foster care services than they already provide. However, the reports have other functions to fulfill besides accounting for the children receiving service. They are expected to provide information useful for evaluating agency service and offering consultation. How well are these latter functions accomplished? The reports tell the type of home or institution in which the child is placed and the source of support. Along with the other data this information seems sufficient for purposes of evaluation and consultation. The discussion above does not imply that changes in the report blanks are not to be desired. 'Streamlining' would probably improve the reporting system and make for easier processing. More thought should be given to the use made of the records and the way data is classified. However, these changes are not necessary as far as the purposes of reporting are concerned. A major obstacle encountered in carrying out the study was the lack of a definition of foster care that was precise as well as adequate. This made classification difficult. The usefulness of quantity statistics for community analysis depends to a large extent on a system of classification which groups agencies according to an overall design of basic problems and services....To a large degree this problem of classification stems from a lack of clarity within the services themiglves about basic concepts, objectives and functions. 45 Esther M. Moore, "Service Accounting and Its Role in the Community", an address delivered at the National Conference of Social Work, 1951. J fc» For the purposes of research, foster care must be rigor- ously defined in terms of its objectiv s, functions, ser- vices and responsibilities. Resea ch pro ects usually indicate new areas to be inVcstigated. This study is no exception. The numerous un- answered questions connected with agency practices and re- lationshils conceal a great p rticn of the Story behind me duilications. Only by further study will the waole t tale be kn wn. f“. -70- Books Bruno, Frank J., Trends in Social Work, Columbia University Press, New York, 1948. Virtue, Kaxine 3., Basic Structure of Children's Services in Michigan, American Judicature Society, Ann Arbor, 1953. Public Documents State of Michigan, The Probate Code, Act 54, P.A. 1944, First Extra Session, being Chapter 712—A of the Com- piled Laws of 1948, as amended. State of Michigan, The Social Welfare Act, Act 280, P.A. 1939, being Sections 400.1 - 400.90 of the Compiled Laws of 1948, as amended. State of Michigan, Act 47, P.A. 1944, First Extra Session, being Sections 722.101 - 722.108 of the Compiled Laws of 1948, as amended. State of Michigan, Department of Social Welfare, Child Care Institutions and Child Placing Agencies: Ee- quirements for Licensing and Recommended Standards, Lansing, March, 1953. q State of Michigan, Department of Social Welfare, Board- inngomes for Children, Lansing, April, 1947. State of Michigan, Department of Social Welfare, Directory of Child Caring Institutions and Placement Agencies in Michigan, Lansing, January 1954. State of Michigan, Department of Social Welfare, Excerpts from the Compiled Laws of l948,_as Amended, Governing Boysr Vocational School, Girls Training School and 2 Michigan Childrenrs Institute, Lansing, October 1953. Resorts Joint Legislative-Committee to Study Foster Care, Egster Care of Children in Michigan: A Report of the Joint Legislative Committee, State Department of Social Welfare, 1951 Michigan Youth Commission, Services for Children Outside Their Own Homes: A Report to the Honorable G. Kennen Williams, Governor, Eovember 1953. -71- iCdlbgn Social Welfs re Commission, Ei3hth Biennial Report, July 1952 - June 1954, Lansin3, December 1954. State of Michi3an, Department of Social Welfare, A3ency and Institutional Care of Children in Im1c1i an, Annual Statistical Rgport 195 2, Lansing, April 19 53. State of Michigan, Department of Social Welfare, hildren in Independent Foster Homes: A Report on Children in Independent Foster Homes in Kichigan, January - July 1952, Lansing, 1952. Ste te of Michi3an, DepartmentS of Social Welfare, Local Services of thel Children' Division, July 1952 - June 1953 , 1.811511er , 1953 0 State of Kicili3an n, Department of Socis l Jelfare e, "ichiPan Juvenile Court Report, Ninth Annual Issue, 195:, Lansin3, April 19E: J30 Ir forma tional Bulletin Number 12, C, ese Loads of Public and Private Child Carinq Agencies as of 11-30-49, Research and Statistics Section, ninuesota D1V1810n of Social Welfare, St. Paul, 1950. ArtiClGS Moore, Esther H., "Service Accountin3 and Its Role in the Community", an address delivered at the Rational Con— ference of Social Work, 1951. Schwartz, Edward E., "A Community Experiment in the Keasure— ment of Juvenile Delinquency', National Probation Association Yearbook, 1945. '9 .223 ..-~ Farm f"? Table A. Total Cases Reported to State Department by Child Carin3 Facilities and lumber in Foster Care, Ingham County, ' 1954. Reports Undupli- Dupli- Per Cent CASES Submit- cated cations of Total ted Count (1) (2) (3) (4) 1. All cases 1,689 1,406 215 15.3 2. Foster Care 1,031 882 126 14.3 cases Table B. Foster Care Duplications, Showin3 Times Reported and Agency Relationships A3ency DUPLICATIOES Humber Reports Relation- ships (1) 12) (3) Total ..... 126 276 150 1. Reported 2 times 103 206 103 2. Reported 3 times 22 66 44 (u 3. Reported 4 times 1 4 3 -74- Table C. Types of Boardin3 Care in Independent Boardin3 Home Pr03ram, Showing Per Cent of Duplications Dupli- Per Cent TYPE OF CARE Cases cations of Total (1) (2i_ (3) T0133]. 0 o o o o o o 257 17 702 10 Day care - Paid (0000000000 168 .10 600 20 FUll-time " Paid 0000000000 64) 7) 1004) ) ) ) 3. Full-time - Free ........... 2) -; - g ‘) 4. Full-time - Work or Wa3e ... 1) -) — ) (“x Table D. ypes of Asency Relationships in Cases of Duplication “1) .— ; a -sh',s :Fni Pel tion'~ ipa uioer T013211 o o o o o o o o 150 o L) {2 E“ 11 fl ' ." .. ‘. ”G - —{/Q o o o o o o .0. o. 0.0. 2 I “011 bor tion octveer A3 nciis 1 7 1. Catholic Social Service (Intake) St. Vincent Home (Care) ............. 56 2. Juvenile Court (Funds) - Private Institution (Care) .......... 22 3. Juvenile Court (Custody) - Private A3ency (Placement) .......... 11 4. State astitution (Parole) - 5 Juvenile Court (Supervision) ........ 6 . County Children's Services (Casework) - Private Agency (Placement) .......... 6 6. Juvenile Court (Custody) - I-:.C.I. (Observation) (. Juvenile Court (Placement) - E.C.I. (Placement) .................. 80 2":0COIO (Edna‘s-i) " Private A3ency (Placement) .......... . Juvenile Court (Placement) - State Institution (Care) ............ 10. Juvenile Court (Custody) - Private Institution (Care) .... 11. Independent boarding Home (Care) - Children's Services (Casework) 12. Private Institution (Care) — Private A3ency (Placement) .......... 13. Children's Services (Casework) - Juvenile Court (Placement) .......... l4. Juvenile Court (Funds) - Private Agency (Placement) .......... +4 nu n) \N \n u: .p p- as U1 II. Succession of Service ........................ 2 1. Independent Boarding Home (Care) Independent anrding Home (Care) .... 2. Independen Boardinr Home (Care) — 1 Private A3ency (Placement) .......... *3 41’ 3. axe Private Afency Twice ............ 4 4. Same Independent Boardin: Home Twice 3 5. Same Children's Warker Twice ......... 2 6. Private Institution (Care) - H State Institution (Care) ............ Private Ins itution (Care) - K.C.I. (Care) ....................... Private Agency (Placement) - Private Agency (Placement) .......... l N 03 l-’ RECOI-IEZTDJZTIOI‘ES The study of the duplications in the Ingham County foster care records has left a number of impressions which may be presented in the form of recommendations. Some of these recommendations represent action to be taken and others problems to be studied. All are not related to the question of obtaining an unduplicated count of the foster care population. A few are on the subject of the prac- tices employed by the foster care services. Nevertheless, it is felt that achieving an exact count of the foster care population throughout the state should be an important con- (.1. O cern of the State Departmen‘ f Social Welfare. Further, that such a comprehensive figure could be obtained without affecting the figures currently computed of the children in the care of the various types of services. (1) Already mentioned in the chapter on conclusions in the study is the need for a rigorous definition of 'foster 8 a. care which would make clear the istinction between foster care service and service in foster care. To do this might require a break-down of foster care into the number of functions considered to be essential components of this type of service. The State Department is interested not only in the | Children in foster care, but also in the arencies providing -2- services for their welfare. In fos terin3 the development of these a3encies, a classification of the types of services £11 (_'+ offered an 0 he variety of relationsn . H, 3reat importance. However, unless an adequate definition is realized, there is little validi ity in clas ifyin3 the Various services rendered by the child welfare agencies. If an a3eney has not accepted responsibility for the ca.re of a child and does not directly offer or supervise such care, it should not be re3arded as performin3 foster care service. In accordance with the suggestion above, a) The County Children's Services cases should not be included in the foster care records, because the service offered by this pr03ram does not include responsibility for the care of the child in foster care.1 In all cases an a3ency or home independent of t:1e county children's services provides the care. b) The Juvenile Court should not be credited with the foster care of the child for whom all it does is to pro- vide funds or award le3al custody, while a private a3ency undertakes his care. c) On the other hand, the Juvenile Court and not the state institution should be re3arded as the a3ency pro- viding foster care to the parolee from the institution 3 s explained later, in regard to the c ses of parolees from state institutions placed and supervised by the children' s ser is s. At present such cases are not redited to these servic s. + 1 An exce ention ShOt ld be maCe as i 9 -3- whom the court supervises and places in a foster home. d) Similarly, the County Children's Services and Kich- i3an Children's Institute should be credited with providing the foster care in cases of parolees from the Boys' Voca- tional S hool and the Girls' Trainin3 School placed direct- ly in foster care on release from the institution. In these cases, the county children's services and the Kichi3an Children's Institute are responsible for find- ing the foster homes and supervising the parolees. All that the institutions furnish are the funds. However, the practice mployed at the present time in recording these cases is the reverse of the one recommended. The care of parolees under the supervision of the county children's services and the Michigan Children's Institute is credited to the state institutions. This is because parolees are not dische 3ed from the institutions and technically are still wards of the institutions. The definition recom- mended in the study determines foster care in terms of re- sponsibility for actual care rather than responsibility for providing funds or for ultimate control. However, a dif- ferent definition would be acceptable, provided that it lends itself to application in classifying the services rendered to children in foster care. (2) Apart from bein3 uneconomical, it seems to be poor administration and harmful to the child for two a3encies to perform a service that can be adequately rendered by one. f, 9"“ -4- All of the agency relationships which are responsible for the duplications in the records ought to be examined from this viewpoint. The service rendered by the juvenile court in deciding legal custody of the child cannot be per- formed by a non—judicial body. But the cases in which the court provides the funds and a private agency the service violates good administrative practice. As long as a pub- lic agency is financially implicated, it must maintain re- cords and prepare reports concerning the expenditure of the funds it provides. In the cases in question, if the court had its own services or transferred its cases to another public agency, or completely to a private agency, there would be no need for duplicate recording. In Ingham County tEe juvenile court operates its own placement service, but often finds it convenient to place in institutions children who are difficult to place. a) When placed in a private institution the child is apt to be 'forgotten' by the court and placement with a foster family is unduly postponed. This is a situation likely to occur whenever a child is placed in an institution, private or public. The placement service of the juvenile court should be stimulated to remove as early as possible children placed temporarily in institutions. b) However, the main problem is developing more public facilities to provide foster care services. The Kichiyan Children's Institute should be expanded in order to be of more assistance to the courts in pl: cin: children neediig care apart from their own families. Further, it should re- lieve the juvenile court of the necessity of making its own adoptive placements. It is unlikely that the court can per- form its function of impartial arbiter in processing adop- tions if it is itself implicated in a; rennin" the adop- tiveIplacements. (3) The relationship between the Catholic Social Ser- vice and the St. Vincent Home for Children is not very clearly defined and seems to be changing in the direction of a merger. This is a desirable trend and should be en- couraged by means of consultation. There are many examples in the state of sectarian agencies offering both placement service and institutional care for children. It is the general feeling that better service can be given by such agencies and for less cost. (4) The county children's services should make it a rule to advise all independent boarding home parents with whom they have contact to report the ch dild en in their care to Hie Sta te Depar ment. As has been pointed out, all the Cl zildr en in foster ca re reported by the children's services would also be reported by an agency or boarding home, if this rule were strictly observed. It appears that in In 1am Cour ty more than two-thirds of the children in beardin: care served by the county children's services were not reported by the boarding parents. (5) The study has drawn attention to one of the differ- ences in results between agency care and independent board- ing home care, a question which is already the source of some concern. There is considerably more duplication in the private agencv records than in the ind pendent boarding home records. The reasons for this can be discovered only by further study. A comparative study of private agency care and independent boarding home care would be very use- ful for future planning and would perhaps make a significant contribution to the administration of foster care service. In carrying out such a study, a) The children served by the two types of services should be examined with regard to their characteristics, the problems which hey present, and their familial relation— ships. b) The types of care offered by the two services should also be studied. 'Care' should be exaiined in terms of its variety, standards, the relationships with natural parents, foster parents and the child. The information obtained should be correlated with observations secured from the study of the children. c) The use of community resources by these services should be investigated. It is important to know how many resources are used, what types, how they were used, and what responsibilities were accepted by the resources and what by the agency providing the care. (‘1’- c. -7- It is considered good practice when one agency assumes responsibility for the care of the child but uses the services and facilities of other resources in the com- munity in order to enhance this care. If this practice were always employed, a child would not be reported more tlan once in the same year, except in cases where care from one source succeeded care from another source. However, most of the duplications in the records were not a result of a succession of service, but rather of a collaboration between agencies. Does this mean that responsibilities are not clearly defined when more than one agency gives service to the same child? gn Unduplicated Count The need for an unduplicated count of the children 'in foster care in Hichigan has already been explained. For purposes of interpretation, planning and consultation, such a count is of great importance. However, the way to achiev— ing it bristles with difficulties. In the first place, the ’3 child welfare asencies and the boarding homes which reno t _ .- cf- (‘1‘ to the State Department of Social Welfare render a vs ie of services to children in foster care. Deciding which of these services are foster care and which are ancillary re- sources is no simple matter. Whichever decision is made would require a number of adjustments both in the method of reporting and in the method of processing the reports. Se- condly, the current reporting system of the State Department does not account for all the children in foster care and it is perhaps impossible to obtain a complete count. An unduplicated count is of little Value unless all the chil- dren to be accounted for are included. The reporting by the independent boarding homes, even when licensed, is known to be incomplete. Since the number of children in indepen- dent care is considerable, this laxity on the part of the independent boarding homes may not be overlooked. In the recommendations which follow, methods for dealing with the two problems described above are outlined. The questions of defining foster care and of obtaining ade- quate reports from independent boarding homes affect the procedures for securing an unduplicated count of the chil- dren in foster care. They must therefore be given prior attention. The Child Welfare League of America in its studies of foster care agencies makes a distinction between primary and secondary service. Primary service constitutes respon- sibility for actual care, hat is, for meeting the day to day needs of the child in care outside his own home. Se- condary service includes a Variety of supplementary activi- ties, such as caseworh counseling, providing funds, respon- sibility for determining legal status and work with natural parents. This distinction is useful for the present study. If adopted, it would prevent the care of any child in a foster home or institution from being credited to more than -9- one agency. The resource providing the home and responsible for the ca°e within the home would be regarded as file as n- cy rendering the foster care service. In such case, the following change would have to I be made in the blanks prepared by the State Department for reporting by the child welfare agencies. A new item 'Type of Service Given' should be included. As is customary, this item should be further broken down into the main types of services rendered by the agencies, such as furnish- ing home, providing funds, etc. In the processing the re- ports, the agency responsible for providing the home should be credited with rendering the foster care service. The introduction of a new item may not be possible on the IBX card currently used without further alteration of the re- In connection with reporting by the independent boarding homes, it is suggested that at the end of each Ayear a circular letter should be sent to each home li- cense? by the State Department requesting that the boarding parent name any foster child in the home at December 31. This type of coope ation from boardilg parents should not A- n w r) ' 1 n ‘ be very diflicult to ootain.‘ wowever, the help 01 the A C When the foster care studies were being carried out by the Joint Legislative Committee between 1949 and 1951, 95 per cent of a sample of 611 boardinf homes re- plied to Questionnaires distributed to them. Of the re- maining 5 per cent the majority represented homes that were already closed by the time that the information was needed. Thus, only 2 percent did not respond. -10- countyc children' 5 workers could be enlisted in securing 1 the needed information from boarding homes that did not ".1 d- r: U) } respond to the circular. It should not be too great to the children's workers to find out by means of telephone or home visit the whereabouts of children in the independent 4. boardina homes in their districts at the end of the year. Indeed, this contact may result in the establishment of a beneficial relationship. The present reporting my tem as far as independen boardin: homes are concerned provides for rewort211: of children on admission to and at removal from the home. Re- porting on admission is not always done; at removal it is very often not done. The result is that the whereabouts of many children who hrve been in inde ende11t boardinf homes are not known until or unless they are reported as being admitted to another home. Reports that are incomplete are of little use. The circular letters recommended above .. i should in :prove the situation considerably an may be put into effect immediately without much trouble, even i ..DJ.‘ J. pile methods for obtainina a: unduplicrted count described be- .L low are rejected. The method t11et seems best for ob‘e inin” an un- LL. 1 duplicated count of the children in foster care seems to be a central registration of all children reported. In this - '1 system, each child reported would be lis ed and fiven a H . ntmber befOLe other information containe' in the rCPOrt is processed. Should the same child as reported more than once in the same year he would be given the s me nuztoe r. In order to identify the child, his other steble ch1racteris- tics besides his name, such as birthxa e, sex, race and name of natural pe‘ents would also ee isted. Lest dif- ference of spellin? should prevent recognition, phonetic -‘ spelliné should be used in recordin: the nagzte. Any of (D numerous phonetic systems that have been invented may be employed. T1e introduction of central registration is per- haps inevitable in the long run. It would require t11e em- ployment of an edC‘ it ional clerk. While it would give an exact count of the number of children reported and of the number in foster Ce re, it would not solve the problem f determining the number of Children in fester care by various agencies. Further, the inadequate reporting by the independent boarding hornes and the juvenile courts would ruin the accuracy of the count obtained. In the circumst_nces, and until central registration “3 is attempted, it is felt that tJG present method of ind- ing out the whereabouts of chillren on the last day of each year can be put to good use in assessins the number of children in foster care at any time during the year. An irvestigation of the number of children in foster care in Inaham County on the last say of each month in 1954 re- vealed that the foster care pepul tion was relative y stable -12- throughout the year.3 Figures from four agencies were used - the juvenile court, Richigan Children's Aid Society, Catholic Social Service and the St. Vincen Home. These agencies catered for well over 90 per cent of the children from Infham County reported as being in foster care by child welfare agencies. The independent boarding home re- ports were considered too unworthy for investigation. There was a gradual increase of the number of children in care from January to December, with the average monthly figure for each agency falling somewhere between May and August. It seems reasonable therefore that the figure taken at De- cember Bl is representative of the foster care pOpulation as well as indicative of the trends in the service. However, if this figure is to be used, it would be necessary to insure more definitive reporting on the part of the agency of the whereabouts of the child at December 31. In the present system any of the reportin: agencies which gives service of any type to a child in foster care would report the child as being in foster care and would be credited with providing this service. It is suggested that when the annual listing is sent out the child welfare agen- cy should be asked to state whether the child reported is in the agency's own home or institution, or in the home or institution of another agency. If this is done and the count is made of only those children reported by the agencies 5 See Tables 1 and 2 on pages 14 and 15. -13- aencies' own homes or institutions, a \— as being in the a reasonably accurate total of the children in foster care on the last day of the year would be achieved. This figure would be as useful for purposes of interpretation, planning and consultation as any that could be obtained by the use of a central registration system introduced at the present c+ ime. Noreover, it would truly represent the trend in the PI, oster care population. Table 1. Ch at -14- ildren from the End of By Agencies in Ingham County Ingham County in Foster Care Each Eonth of 1954. Agency KONTi Juvenile Catholic hichiga . Court Social Children's Service - Aid St. Vincent Society Home Average 181.5 61.5 74.75 1. January 160 50 75 2. February 169 60 75 5. March 176 62 75 4. April 176 61 75 5. May 177 65 81 6. June 176 62 79 7. July 185 66 77 8. August 181 61 75 9. September 190 60 77 10. October 185 64 74 11. hovember 200 66 74 12. December 205 65 67a a The drop in the M.C.A.S. total at December 51 is due largely to the discharge of a children during the month. currence 0 As may be observed, is relatively stable throughout the year. family of 5 This is not a usual oc- JC1119 11.00.4050 caseload -15- Table 2. Children from Ingham County in Foster Care in Four Quarters of 1954, by Ingham County Agencies Quarterly figures represent mean of totals for 5 months Quarter - fl ""9: A It‘d-2.1L] U .- First Second Third Fourth Total 2J9.3 516.6 525 352 1. Juvenile Court 168.5 176.5 185.5 196 2. Catholic Social Service — St. Vincent Home 57.5 62 62.5 64.5 3. Michigan Chil- dren's Aid Society 75.6 78.5 75.5 71.6 Ni-" 111111111111 '1} 111111111 ll 11111111111! HI 12 93 01747 9183