Research that Benefits Children and Families

How fun it is to let my imagination run wild! Since I have the means and the knowledge to do so, my research stems from a question about today’s foster care system.

 

Background Information

Below is an excerpt of the pilot program initiated in San Francisco in the light of reforming the foster care system.

“Services to be provided:

RBS is a two-year experiment designed to determine whether better outcomes for children and youth with complex emotional and behavioral needs and their families can be obtained by integrating eight critical service components in one comprehensive package: The 24 month pilot can begin anytime during the Pilot Program time frame ending on January 31, 2016 and will vary per child referred to the Pilot Program.

Behavioral stabilization in a dedicated 6 bed family-centered residential treatment cottage;

Immediate and intensive family inclusion and support through the resources of a Family Connection Center;

Overarching care coordination through a family support team;

Evidence-supported therapeutic services;

Opportunities for interim community placements with parents, relative homes, or treatment or regular foster care;

Parallel community services while a child or youth is in the residential cottage to help families and community partners prepare for the child or youth’s return;

Intensive transitional care services, in-home treatment, and crisis stabilization and services following discharge from the residential cottage. 

The following children and youth are eligible for the program:

Male or female dependent children or youth ages 6 through 16 under the supervision of HSA who are in an RCL level 12 or higher group home, and their families who have behavioral needs that at present cannot be managed in the community using wraparound or other intensive community-based services,

And who have family members or other primary caregivers who are willing to work with the program to help the child or youth achieve permanency, safety and well-being,

But for whom a sustainable permanency plan is unlikely to be accomplished within the next 6 months unless intensive work is done to resolve difficulties in attachment and to address challenges presented by the child or youth’s persistent pattern of dangerous or disruptive behaviors” (Human Services Agency, City of San Francisco, 2011).

 

Rationale:

Children uplifted from their families of origin without being prepared and being assessed, have a greater chance to not perform well in their first foster home, move to another foster home, and often times end up having over 8 foster homes listed on their cumulative file before landing in a group home specialized in intensive care treatment. Children’s original trauma from home has now been multiplied by ten, or exponentially multiplied due to the almost irreversible negative emotional consequences that children develop from thinking they are bad kids because they can’t remain in the families they have been placed in, and feeling guilty about not knowing how to remain in a family. When they qualify for intensive care treatment, several more years of abuse and mistrust have established deep roots.

Since counties follow social science findings that children strive within their birth family, counties’ only goal is to reunite foster children with their birth families. Unfortunately, those birth families receive little help from the government. Consequently, children are encouraged to visit with their families who are not ready to welcome them in optimal conditions.  

Rather than spending money downstream, it would make more sense to dedicate that money upstream, help the families keep their children from the start so foster care does not become a need. Since huge amounts of money are spent on institutions who hire highly specialized staff, the money invested in keeping those families together will be better spent because the only trauma children will know comes from their family of origin, much like everyone of us, each person on planet earth.

 

 

Hypothesis:

Children fare better when they remain in their family of origin, provided those families receive all available services that will help children stay in their original home.

 

 

    

Personal Research Journey

 

When we started the reflection on research, I knew that my deficit would lie on narrowing down a workable research topic. The following is the list of the 3 subtopics I had thought about to respond to this general topic “Improving immigrants’ participation in their children’s school life”:

How is poverty and legal status responsible for a lack of involvement in school?

What can schools and educators do to better understand each of their families’ culture, values, and their relationship with education?

How can schools promote better parent involvement? 

 

Thanks to the professor’s feedback, I understand that questions need to be carefully crafted to reduce the scope of the research, in other words making research possible. According to Mac Naughton, Rolfe, & Siraj-Blatchford (2010), reviewing what has already been written on the topic will highlight the question that will develop previous research and benefit children and their families. Studying the existing literature will help:

“identify gaps in knowledge, and contradictions and disagreements about what is known about the topic

identify areas of uncertainty, puzzlement or confusion in what is known” (Mac Naughton, Rolfe, &Siraj-Blatchford, 2010).

       In addition of being well-encapsulated, the research question must also seek to bring new insights to a topic and not “unknowingly replicate other people’s research” (Mac Naughton, Rolfe, &Siraj-Blatchford, 2010).

        With this in mind, I need to reformulate my question to prepare the research. I also need to craft the question and stay true to my initial interest concerning immigrant families and their children.  Question 2 has several advantages such as:

encapsulating the idea of immigration as it relates to families and children

narrowing the scope of research to practical actions schools and educators could take to better understand their families

promoting a better relationship between school and parents.

 

    Surely, this question will continue to change as the course takes us further in our investigation and as my colleagues offer their feedback.

    Since I teach Spanish to kindergarteners through to 8^th graders, I would greatly benefit from my colleagues’ expertise in preschoolers and their families, especially immigrant families or where one parent was not born in the U.S. I am interested in how children’s social-emotional balance is affected by the impact of immigration in their lives. I would love to glean information on how parents understand their relationship with their children’s teachers and school. I would greatly appreciate if my colleagues could talk about the quality of the relationship they hold with their parents and if they could share with me their thoughts on why it is so.

            Finally, here are four articles that I downloaded from the Walden Library that I plan to use for my simulation research:

DOUCET, F. (2011). Parent Involvement as Ritualized Practice. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 42(4), 404-421. doi:10.1111/j.1548-1492.2011.01148.x

HAMILTON, H. A., MARSHALL, L., RUMMENS, J. A., FENTA, H., & SIMICH, L. (2011). Immigrant Parents' Perceptions of School Environment and Children's Mental Health and Behavior. Journal Of School Health, 81(6), 313-319. doi:10.1111/j.1746-1561.2011.00596.x

Yu, S. M., & Singh, G. K. (2012). High Parenting Aggravation Among US Immigrant Families. American Journal Of Public Health, 102(11), 2102-2108. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2012.300698

Clair, L. t., Jackson, B., & Zweiback, R. (2012). Six Years Later: Effect of Family Involvement Training on the Language Skills of Children From Migrant Families. School Community Journal, 22(1), 9-19.

Reference

 Mac Naughton, G., Rolfe, S.A., & Siraj-Blatchford, I. (2010). Doing early childhood research: International perspectives on theory and practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

 

 

 

A Special Note of Thanks

Dear Dr. D.,

Thank you for helping each of us to reach our full potential through relentless encouragement and kind guidance!

Week after week, the research I conducted under your guidance led me to push the boundaries of my thoughts and bias, freeing me to open up to new worlds of understanding and sensitivities.

One last thank you for opening us to the international early childhood field! Priceless!
Sincerely,

Marie

Thank you!

It has been invigorating and reassuring to learn that U.S. early childhood educators are not alone in their own state and country, and that educators abroad share similar problems namely issues with changing demographics and diversity, poverty, excellence and equity of care and education for children and families. Knowing that somewhere some educator is on the same wavelength than some of us, that we are not alone, gives me strength to persevere in the field or who else is going to stand up for children.

Importantly, the Early Childhood Australia (ECA) revealed how focused repair work toward a specific population needs to be. In the ECA position statements, “A statement of regret and commitment to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families” mentions that “This commitment will be revisited each year at ECA's National Council meeting to evaluate progress and for review and modification as necessary”, and strikes me as what excellence in equity can look like: a conscious work in progress. Clearly, the ECA realized that in order to restore the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s cultural identity, lands and waters, languages and communities, Australia needs to closely monitor progress for years ahead. In other words, the ECA is aware of the damage done to those populations, such damage taking generations to heal.

Assuredly, my goal is to continue communicating with Cyle Nielsen and hopefully soon start exchanging emails with Elizabeth Burro at Pastoral del Niño. Since, I have not heard back from El Salvador or Canada, my other goal is to submit my request again because I would like to learn firsthand how poverty affects families in those countries.

From the extraordinary adventure at “Pastoral del niño de Paraguay”, I have gained an unexpected confidence in my peers in the EC field. This confidence has healed wounds that were still opened from a past experience teaching in the secondary education. Equally, if my wounds can heal, I know that my peers in the field of early education can bring young children in school what they need to grow up to their full potential.

Since this is the last blog for this class, my last words go to my peers whose ideas and expertise have helped me broaden my understanding of the early childhood field. A heartfelt thank you for sharing the resources you came across while conducting your research: they are safely tucked away but readily available. Thank you for inspiring me!

Good luck on your next class! I hope we can continue to study and grow together to better serve children.