Two groups of Romanian children were compared on spectral power and coherence in the electroencephalogram (EEG) in early childhood. One group consisted of previously institutionalized children who had been randomly assigned to a foster care intervention at a mean age of 23 months. The second group had been randomized to remain in institutional care. Because of a policy of noninterference, a num...

Foster care is a system created to protect children from an unsafe home environment yet multiple foster home placements, conflictual or nonexistent relationships between foster parents and birth parents, long, drawn out court battles, and living in an on-going state of not knowing when or if they will be going home are just some of the challenges many children in care are expected to manage. Th...

State foster care systems are forcing many foster children to take high dosages of dangerous, mind-altering psychotropic medications. State actors have little medical background for each child and have limited time to diagnose disorders, thereby creating potential constitutional and human rights violations. States are only supposed to administer psychotropic medication to a child when necessary...

BACKGROUND To evaluate physical and mental health in children in foster care and comparison with general population. METHODS The study is carried out between September 2011 and April 2012 into nine group homes in Rome. It involved 112 children ranging in age 2-17 years, living in temporary care facilities or institutes. All data came out of clinical history and physical exams, validated by a ...

All children do best when they live in safe, stable, and nurturing families, yet far too many children lack this fundamental foundation. Every year, millions of children are abused or neglected—close to 300,000 so egregiously that they are removed from their homes by the state and placed in foster care. For too many of these children, foster care is no safe haven. Instead, the children drift fr...

PURPOSE Making good consumer decisions requires having good information. This study compared long-term-care recommendations among various types of health professionals. DESIGN AND METHODS We gave randomly varied scenarios to a convenience national sample of 211 professionals from varying disciplines and work locations. For each scenario, we asked the professional to recommend the appropriate ...

Overview When children are abused, neglected, or abandoned by their parents or when parents’ own difficulties (such as drug addiction, mental illness, and incarceration) leave them unable to provide adequate care, other relatives often step in. If no family members are able to take in these children, a court often places them in the care of other families or in institutions. And so, they enter ...

The files of 419 children in family foster care and kinship foster care were used in a retrospective longitudinal design study that examined their placement histories in child welfare. Significant associations were found between the number of placements on one hand, and the prevalence of attachment disorders, severity of behavioral problems, and breakdowns of new foster care placements on the o...

Since the 1970s, finding alternative permanent families for children in foster care who could not return to their birth parents has been a primary goal of the child welfare system. Since that time, significant gains have been made in helping such children find permanent homes through adoption and guardianship. This article analyzes these trends and finds: A majority of states have doubled the n...