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Ecology of the Community - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Production, distribution, consumption. The community provides its members with the means to make a living. This may be agriculture, industry, or services.
      - Socialization. The community has means by which it instills its norms and values in its members. This may be tradition, modeling, and/or formal education.
      - Social control. The community has the means to enforce adherence to community values. This may be group pressure to conform and/or formal laws.
      - Social participation. The community fulfills the need for companionship. This may occur in a neighborhood, church, business, or other group.
      - Mutual support. The community enables its members to cooperate to accomplish tasks too large or too urgent to be handled by a single person. Supporting a community hospital with tax dollars and donations is an example of people cooperating to accomplish the task of health care.
- - - - A classic study (Hayward, Rothenberg, & Beasley, 1974) comparing different playground settings (traditional, modern, adventure) found that the availability of play materials clearly influenced play activity.
        
        ♦ The traditional playground setting had swings, a slide, a teeter-totter, and a sandbox.
        
        ♦ The modern playground had various sculptures on which children could climb, crawl, and slide.
        
        ♦ The adventure playground had old lumber, tires, crates, bricks, and rocks.
- - - - An aspect of the macrosystem, political ideology, is influential in determining what services government leaders believe to be worthy of support; for example, the Head Start preschool program was launched under President Lyndon Johnson. Political ideology also refers to legislation; for example, the No Child Left Behind Act was passed under President George W. Bush.
      - Another aspect of the macrosystem, economics, relates to various sources of funding for a community service. Agencies providing services may he public, private, or a combination.
      - Public agencies. Financed by taxation, they are administered within the legal framework of the local, state, or federal government. For example, an outcome of the 1910 White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children was the establishment of the U.S. Children's Bureau, the oldest federal agency for children, for the purpose of protecting children from harm. Since then the role of government in the protection of children has expanded in scope, as well as in the economic resources allocated to programs from tax monies.
      - Private agencies. Financed by donations, membership dues, corporate contributions, consultation fees, investment income, foundation grants, publication sales, or conference fees, they are established by individuals or philanthropic, religious, fraternal, or humanitarian groups; their management is the responsibility of a board of directors. The nation's oldest and largest membership-based child welfare organization is the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA, 2002), founded in 1920.
      - Combination agencies. Using both public and private sources of money, these may get government grants to implement research or innovations and private donations to provide services over and above what is funded by the grant.
- - - - The purpose of family supportive services is to preserve a healthy family life by helping family members achieve harmonious relationships. In helping families, family services consider the influence of culture, religion, and family composition (Burger, 2010; Schorr, Both, & Copple, 1991).
      - Referrals
        Problems that threaten the stability of family life include discord between husband and wife, discord between parent and child, illness, accidents, economic problems, desertion, delinquency, teen pregnancy, and alcohol or drug abuse. Family service agencies provide referrals to specific agencies dealing with these specific problems. They also give counseling, which may include advice on budgeting and home management, vocational opportunities, and family relationships.
      - Economic Assistance
        Both public and private social agencies offer family services. Generally, public agencies offer services based on the family's economic need (families must meet legal eligibility requirements to qualify for assistance). Assistance may include arranging grants of money, help finding a job or locating affordable and suitable housing, the distribution of food and medicine, and child-care services. Private family service agencies are concerned primarily with personal problems and emotional maladjustment of family members rather than with economic problems.
      - Counseling
        Family services include marriage counseling, prenatal and family planning, family life education, homemaker services, and senior citizen services. Counseling services help marriage partners meet their marital responsibilities and resolve marital conflicts. They may also help in emotional maladjustment problems such as lack of communication between parents and teenagers, in premarital counseling, or in problems involved in adjusting to divorce.
      - Family Preservation
        The federal Family Preservation and Support Services Program (FPSSP) was officially enacted in 1993. States receive money to develop family preservation and support services, thereby providing incentives to change the way services have traditionally been delivered to families (see Table 10.2).
      - The goals of family preservation services are to (1) keep the family safe, (2) avoid unnecessary placement of children in substitute care and the consequent high human and financial cost, and (3) improve family functioning so that the behavior that led to the crisis will be less likely to recur (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2008). Family preservation services offer a mix of counseling, education, referrals, concrete assistance, and advocacy.
      - Senior Citizens
        Senior citizen services may include economic assistance, in-home care, day care, institutionalization, recreation, Meals on Wheels (a program that delivers meals to the homes of the housebound), friendly visiting, and arranging for other community services to “adopt a grandparent” (for example, a child-care center might welcome the experience and extra help a senior citizen could provide for the children).
      - Child Health and Welfare
        The term child welfare encompasses care for individuals who may be indigent, neglected, abused, deserted, sick, disabled, maladjusted, or delinquent. The purpose of child welfare agencies is to protect the physical, intellectual, and emotional well-being of children (Zaslow, Tout, Smith, & Moore, 1998). Child welfare services provide
        
        The need for financial assistance to mothers in order to preserve the family was first emphasized at the White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children in 1910. The first national welfare legislation was passed as part of the Social Security Act of 1935 (Zaslow et al., 1998).
        
        ♦ economic and personal aid to children living in their own homes
        
        ♦ foster care for children who have no home or cannot remain with their own families
        
        ♦ institutional care when children cannot be placed in a foster home or cannot remain with their own families (CWLA, 2002).
      - Rehabilitative Services: Correction, Mental Health, Special Needs
        
        The purpose of rehabilitative agencies is to enable or restore an individual's capacity to participate effectively in the community by correcting behavior, addressing mental health, and/or providing needed services to those who have recently immigrated to this country as well as to those who have a disability.
        
        Correction
        Correctional services are provided for children, youths, and adults who have difficulties abiding by the legal rules of community life. What constitutes deviant behavior varies among different social groups. Some children may be encouraged by their friends and neighbors to behave delinquently;
        
        Children under age 18 who are deemed neglected or delinquent are under the jurisdiction of the juvenile court. The juvenile court is not a criminal court; it does not file charges against the child. Therefore, there is no jury to determine guilt or innocence. Rather, the court attempts to understand the causes for the particular maladjustment and determines what steps must be taken for rehabilitation.
        
        Mental Health
        Children are usually referred to local child guidance clinics by teachers, medical personnel, or the court. Behavioral problems indicating the need for referral include truancy, running away, lying, stealing, vandalism, setting fires, and extreme aggressiveness. Other behaviors may include excessive shyness, apathy, daydreaming, withdrawal, excessive fear-fulness, enuresis, eating disorders, and nightmares. Child guidance clinics provide medical and psychological examinations for the child. The parents and often the siblings, as well as the child, may come for treatment. Services are coordinated with the school.
        
        Special Needs
        Services for recent immigrants to the United States encompass education (English language, American history, government, and culture), financial assistance, housing assistance, and vocational counseling, as well as referrals to other agencies providing specific services.
        
        Services for people with disabilities emphasize inclusion. Self-help and productive work are the goals of rehabilitation. These services encompass evaluation, special education, financial assistance, counseling, vocational training, recreation, and referrals for treatment (Epps & Jackson, 2000).
- - - - ensuring income security
      - improving health
      - increasing educational achievement
      - preparing adolescents for adulthood
      - strengthening and supporting families
      - protecting vulnerable children and their families
      - making policies and programs work
      - creating a moral climate for children
      - providing financing for programs
  - - - ♦ at-risk youth
      - ♦ ex-offenders
      - ♦ homeless and hungry
      - ♦ substance abusers
      - ♦ those with HIV/AIDS
      - ♦ welfare-to-work families
  - - - mental health
      - physical health
      - trauma
      - emergency medical services and transport
      - disaster case management
      - disaster preparedness for child care/early education, elementary, secondary education, child welfare, and juvenile justice
      - sheltering standards, services, and supplies
      - housing
      - evacuation and reunification.
  - - - ♦ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is a federal and state matching program that provides temporary financial support for families with children. Eligibility, work requirements, and time limits for benefits are established by individual states. This welfare reform program replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).
        
        ♦ Unemployment compensation covers all workers in the labor force. Financed by employers' contributions, it is intended to maintain about 50 percent of a worker's income for a temporary period of involuntary unemployment. The program is administered by federal and state governments.
        
        ♦ Social Security survivor or disability benefits are administered by the federal government; payments come from the Social Security Trust Fund, through taxes on employer and employee. Social Security benefits earned by those who die or become disabled are paid to their survivors or dependents.
        
        ♦ Supplemental Security Income (SSI) provides a guaranteed minimum income for the aged and disabled.
        
        ♦ Veterans' benefits are paid by the federal government to survivors or dependents of veterans who die or are disabled in military service.
        
        ♦ Child nutrition services are federally funded programs administered by the states. They are intended to improve the nutritional standards of low-income families. Included are the food stamp program, in which participants buy food stamps, according to a formula based on income and family size, at a subsidized cost and then use the stamps to buy food; the National School Lunch Program; the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); and the National School Breakfast Program.
        
        ♦ Other services include a variety of social services funded through state grants under Title IV and Title XX of the Social Security Act. Large proportions of these funds provide day care for children of employed mothers and other child welfare services. Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and Head Start provide educational and related services to low-income children. Child health programs and Medicaid also provide services to poor families.
    - - Although welfare reform has contributed to declining poverty rates, problems regarding government support for poor families with children remain. Among the ongoing issues are the income level at which the government considers a family poor enough to receive assistance, the funding levels for welfare-to-work programs, implementation of job training, employment prospects, child care, housing, and adequate health care coverage (Haskins & Sawhill, 2007).
        
        the persistently high rate of unemployment among parents
        
        the inability of parents to earn high enough wages to escape poverty
        
        the growth in the number of female-headed households because of divorce and out-of-wedlock births
        
        inadequate preschool education, public education, and job training
        
        inadequate budgets in government programs
    - - Children who are homeless suffer psychological, as well as behavioral and educational, consequences. Homeless youth are those who leave home as a result of a severe family conflict which might include physical and/or sexual abuse.
        
        ♦ The nation's homeless population decreased by 0.4%, or about 2,325 people. At a point in time in January 2012, 633,782 people were experiencing homelessness. There was a decrease in all homeless subpopulations with the exception of persons in families.
        
        ♦ The largest decreases were among individuals identified as chronically homeless (6.8%) and veterans (7.2%). The size of the chronic homeless population decreased from 107,148 in 2011 to 99,894 in 2012. The size of the veteran homeless population decreased from 67,495 in 2011 to 62,619 in 2012.
        
        ♦ The national rate of homelessness was 20 homeless people per 10,000 people in the general population. The rate for veterans was 29 homeless per 10,000 veterans in the general population.
        
        ♦ A majority of persons identified as homeless were staying in emergency shelters or transitional housing, but 38% were unsheltered, living on the streets, or in cars, abandoned buildings, or other places not intended for human habitation. The size of the unsheltered population remained basically unchanged between 2011 and 2012.
        
        ♦ The number of people in homeless families increased by 1.4% between 2011 and 2012; however, there was no change in the number of homeless families.
- - - - ♦ Child welfare services fund state efforts to preserve families by strengthening their ability to address their problems and avoid unnecessary foster care, and to reunite children who have been placed in foster care with their parents.
      - ♦ Social services block grants (Title XX) provide various preventive, counseling, and other support services for low-income children and families, as well as for vulnerable, abused, and neglected children and their families.
      - ♦ Child and adolescent service system program helps ensure that youths with serious emotional problems receive needed mental health services by improving coordination among the numerous agencies responsible for them.
    - - Government programs assisting families with child-care issues include the following:
      - ♦ Income tax deductions are provided for child-care expenses of employed mothers.
      - ♦ Subsidized day care (such as Head Start and Title XX) is among the social services supported by federal and state matching funds.
  - - - In addition to foster care funding and adoption assistance, other government programs for children with special needs include the following (see also Table 10.4):
      - ♦ The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act authorizes grants to states to assist them in developing and strengthening programs designed to prevent child abuse and neglect while providing treatment for its victims.
      - ♦ The Family Violence Prevention and Services Program supports local programs that provide immediate shelter and related services to victims of family violence and their children.
    - - To be effective in supporting children's development, community child-care services should be comprehensive in that they link with health, nutrition, social services, and education for children and their parents (Decker & Decker, 2001). Such collaboration strengthens the immediate environment of vulnerable children, making them more resilient to stress (Walsh, 2006).
      - 10-9〉 Community Involvement: Volunteerism
        
        Being a citizen in your community means participating in community issues and providing help where needed. The following are some reasons for becoming involved:
        
        ♦ Learn about the needs in your community.
        
        ♦ Conserve funds for charities, nonprofit, faith-based, and other community organizations by contributing your time.
        
        ♦ Share your skills and gain new ones.
        
        ♦ Develop self-esteem and self-confidence by feeling needed and valued.
        
        ♦ Meet new people from all walks of life.
        
        ♦ Enhance your resume and make important networking contacts.
      - Volunteer Groups
        
        Various national, state, and local programs are available for service. For example, the Corporation for National and Community Service (www.nationalservice.gov) was established in 1993 by the U.S. government. The corporation was created to connect Americans of all ages and backgrounds with opportunities to give back to their communities and their nation—the Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and Learn and Serve America programs are examples. The corporation represents our nation's philosophy of commitment to building a culture of citizenship, service, and responsibility. The corporation gives out grants to support service and volunteering in community organizations by collaborating with nonprofit organizations, corporations, and foundations to determine their needs.
        
        The members and volunteers who serve in corporation programs provide vital assistance to institutions and organizations that serve the public. Drawing on their skills, experience, and concern for others, they provide a wide range of services. These include
        
        ♦ tutoring at-risk youth
        
        ♦ building homes for low-income people
        
        ♦ caring for homebound seniors
        
        ♦ working at food banks
        
        ♦ donating food, clothing, and household items
        
        ♦ helping maintain parks by cleaning the environment
        
        ♦ responding to natural disasters.
        
        Community Involvement: Advocacy
        
        Child advocacy is the process of sensitizing individuals and groups to the unmet needs of children and to society's obligation to provide a positive response to those needs. In addition to the unmet needs of children examined earlier in the chapter, there are still many others, such as child maltreatment, a more humane system of juvenile justice, and transition programs for young people leaving protective community services to become independent functioning adults.
        
        Advocacy groups can form to solve and monitor a particular problem (for example, Action for Children's Television was instrumental in getting the Children's Television Act passed in 1990); they can be a source of ongoing support for children's problems in general (such as raising money); or they can be an official government lobby (pressuring members of Congress to pass appropriate legislation). Examples of ongoing children's advocacy groups follow.
        
        Children's Defense Fund (CDF)—provides a strong and effective voice for all the children in America who cannot vote, lobby, or speak for themselves. Particular attention is paid to the needs of poor, cultural minority children, and those with disabilities. The CDF's goal is to educate the nation about the needs of children and encourage preventive investment in children before they become ill, drop out of school, suffer family breakdown, or get into trouble. CDF monitors the development and implementation of federal and state policies (Children's Defense Fund, 2012).
        
        Child Welfare League of America (CWLA)—agencies that belong are grounded in knowledge and understanding of the needs of children and their families. The league takes the position that advocacy is an important aspect of the total responsibility of contemporary child welfare agencies. According to the league's philosophy, a contemporary social agency cannot merely be a provider of services; it must also be concerned with the general welfare policies of the community. It must take into account the external forces and conditions that affect people's ability to function. Child welfare agencies are expected to help change unfavorable community conditions that affect children and their families adversely. In this respect, CWLA employs an ecological approach to human development.
        
        National Congress of Parents and Teachers (NCPT)—a national coalition of local groups, called Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs), which are devoted to improving relations between home and school on behalf of children.
        
        Advocating for Child Protection
        
        Inappropriate parenting practices resulting in child abuse or neglect were discussed in Chapter 4, and the role of the caregiver in protecting children who might be maltreated was discussed in Chapter 5. Here, advocacy for children is exemplified in the law (macrosystem influence) and in the community services provided to help families (mesosystem influence).
        
        The Child Welfare Information Gateway [CWIG] (2013) offers resources on child abuse and neglect, including the following information:
        
        ♦ Overview. Links to information on training, funding, related organizations, state hotlines, and answers to frequently asked questions.
        
        ♦ Definitions. Provides definitions from federal and state laws and addresses the differences between discipline and abuse.
        
        ♦ Identification. Includes resources on the signs and symptoms of neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and emotional abuse.
        
        ♦ Statistics. Presents national and state statistics on types of abuse and neglect and includes information on abuse and neglect of children with disabilities, abuse and neglect in out-of-home care, recurrence, and fatalities.
        
        ♦ Risk & protective factors. Discusses characteristics of parents or caregivers, children, families, and communities that increase risk of abuse or neglect or promote safe and supportive families and resilience in children.
        
        ♦ Perpetrators. Identifies the characteristics of perpetrators, including those who commit certain types of abuse.
        
        ♦ Impact. Explores how abuse and neglect affect children, adolescents, adult survivors, and society.
        
        ♦ Fatalities. Addresses the occurrence of child fatalities, perpetrator characteristics, and risk factors.
        
        ♦ Contact. For help with reporting child abuse and neglect or to speak with a counselor, contact Childhelp® at 800-422-4453.
        
        What treatment or intervention programs are available in the community for child maltreatment?
        According to the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatmnent Act of 1974 (reenacted in 2010), beyond identifying and assessing maltreatment, agencies and practitioners confront the challenge of providing effective treatment or intervention programs. In order to protect children, legal intervention is the first requirement (CWIG, 2011). Once suspected abuse or neglect is reported to the appropriate authorities, a social worker and/or a police officer is sent to the home or school to investigate. If it is determined that the child is endangered, he or she is placed in protective custody—which usually means the child is taken away from the parents or guardians and is brought to a state, county, or city institution until the case is heard in court (usually within 72 hours).
        
        In sum, the goals of treating the family that is abusive are to help the parents with their problems, help the children with their problems, and improve the relationship between parents and children in order to prevent further abuse (CWIG, 2008).
        
        The following are various types of therapeutic intervention or treatment used with families that are abusive, depending on the particular case (Paxton & Haskins, 2009):
        
        ♦ Family preservation. The child remains at home under the supervision of the protective agency. The child protective worker visits the home on a scheduled basis. The worker can teach child development and child management to the parents.
        
        ♦ Parent education. The parents take a formal course given in their community. Some programs are based on parent effectiveness training, which concentrates on developing good communication between parents and their children. These programs theorize that abuse often occurs because parents do not understand or know how to react to their children's expressions of need and affection. Other programs teach behavior modification techniques. The aim of these programs is to provide alternatives to physical punishment when disciplining children. Parents are trained to notice their children behaving appropriately and to reward them accordingly. In some communities, hotlines provide counseling advice, available any time of the day.
        
        ♦ Child care. The child is cared for during the day at a center or in a family day-care home.
        
        ♦ Family therapy. A therapist addresses the whole family's interaction patterns.
        
        ♦ Kinship care. The child is temporarily (or permanently) placed in the care of grandparents or other close relatives.
        
        ♦ Foster care. Children are temporarily placed in another home until their families can provide adequate care.
        
        ♦ Parent support groups. The parents are required to join a support group, such as Parents Anonymous (a voluntary organization of child abusers), and/or become involved in their child's school. Parents can join Parents Anonymous on their own or be ordered to join by the court. When parents join, they are taught how to handle anger or frustration—for example, going into a room alone and then screaming, kicking, or pounding. The point is to get the aggression out on objects so that no one gets hurt. Members share their difficulties and try to work them out at meetings, with the help of other members. They try to develop solutions to their problems and to learn to feel better about themselves. The members maintain a network of telephone numbers so that they can call one another for support when they feel a crisis coming on.
        
        ♦ Institutionalization. Children are temporarily placed in an institution for abused/neglected children until their families can provide adequate care.
        
        ♦ Adoption. When returning the child to his or her home is unwise or impossible, the child is put up for adoption. This avoids interminable foster care.