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Write a summary relating to problems of raising children in dysfunctional families and the consequences of such upbringing require the attention of the authorities.
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The problems of raising children in dysfunctional families and the consequences of such upbringing require the attention of the authorities. Alcoholic parents or those parents who beat their children risk losing the right to educate them if an offense is registered once or several times. Under the recently introduced policy of the Department of Job and Family Services, these children will be placed in foster homes until it is determined that the parents have received mental health and addiction treatment.
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What could be a reference for this essay?
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The Department considers upbringing by parents with deviant forms of behavior as the only reason for the future deviant behavior of children
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Another reference?
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At the current stage
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essay relating to problems of raising children in dysfunctional families and the consequences of such upbringing require the attention of the authorities. Exapnd on the summary above.
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#A Policy Analysis Regarding the Issue of Child Endangerment Essay
The problems of raising children in dysfunctional families and the consequences of such upbringing require the attention of the authorities. Alcoholic parents or those parents who beat their children risk losing the right to educate them if an offense is registered once or several times. Under the recently introduced policy of the Department of Job and Family Services, these children will be placed in foster homes until it is determined that the parents have received mental health and addiction treatment. The authorities have implemented such provisions based on social learning theory.
According to this theory, human behavior is conditioned by the constant mutual influence of behavioral, cognitive, and environmental factors. The risk of a person’s involvement in criminal activity is higher if this person is in a certain way already connected with illegal structures. The forthcoming implementation of the policy raises specific ethical issues that cannot be ignored as they directly affect the well-being of children. Although there are positive consequences of such an attempt to eliminate the threat to children, there are still risks of mental health deterioration due to their separation from the family and other negative consequences.
For children, being in a family where they are subjected to physical or mental violence is unsafe for their health. For example, child abuse in the family contributes to the spread of exposure to trauma at several levels of a child’s ecology (Rosen et al., 2018). Domestic abuse increases the child’s chances of suicidal thoughts and attempts (Lippard & Nemeroff, 2020). Children who were mentally, physically, and sexually abused in childhood have problems with memory in adulthood: reduced attention, visual and numerical information is poorly remembered (Dodaj et al., 2017). The registration of cases of abuse by parents and the subsequent removal of children from families is a radical step in solving the problem of violence against children in the family. However, it can be stressful for a child to be taken out of the family.
There is no guarantee that children in a foster family will not be bullied and given proper care. The guardianship authorities work with potential adoptive parents to determine the sanity, financial condition, and reliability of future adoptive parents. However, there is always a risk that a child from one dysfunctional family will end up in another equally unreliable one. Moreover, when children are taken away from the family, the likelihood that they are already mentally traumatized is high. The kids will need the help of a psychotherapist, although there is no information in the program relating to provision of a specialist by family support services. Thus, it is not easy to describe this policy as ethical since many aspects of the child’s well-being are overlooked.
Even though the child’s parents may be alcoholics and drug addicts, many children love their parents suffering from addictions and are not ready to refuse to communicate with them for six months. During this period, the child may be able to establish a friendly relationship with the foster family. Returning to a relative who has undergone therapy can be difficult because the child will be attached to the foster family members. During the analysis of the implemented policy, it seems that children’s emotional attachment issues are ignored as it becomes more important to fulfill the task of limiting contact with abusive parents. However, if one of the tasks is to provide the child with a high level of well-being, the issues of his emotional state when parting with his foster and blood family should be considered.
From the point of view of influence on society, this policy has predominantly positive consequences. Knowing that if it is revealed that child abuse is happening in the family, the children can be taken away, the likelihood that parents will continue to abuse children will decrease. However, the possibility that child abuse will become latent should not be overlooked. There are cases when people did not realize that a child is being tortured in a neighboring house because they did not hear the screams. The walls were too dense, and there were soundproofed. No traces of physical impact on the child were discovered due to the unique hitting technique used by abusing parents. It is necessary to provide additional measures of influence to prevent such a transition of violence into a latent state.
In addition, speaking relating to impact of the implemented policy on society, it should be noted that most likely, the neighbors will be more attentive to what is happening in the nearby houses. It is possible that due to negative relationships between family members of different homes, someone could falsely inform the guardianship authorities that neighbors are abusing alcohol or drugs. It is worth ensuring that such claims are checked for validity before decisions are made regarding the child’s fate. The emergence of a more attentive society is a positive consequence. Still, the adverse outcomes of the policy should also be borne in mind.
Since the Department’s policy is based on social learning theory, it is necessary to analyze the essence of this scientific view in more detail. According to Albert Bandura, the picture of reality based on which one acts results from one’s experiences with other people (Kurt, 2019). Memory makes it possible to reproduce behavior patterns typical for the role model. The child can copy movements and actions; however, repetition and training are needed for correct reproduction. Mimicking an action is motivated by a desire to maximize rewards and minimize punishment. This principle, in particular, is fundamental to the utilitarian concept of well-being. Therefore, participation in criminal activity may be associated not only with the observed deviant behavior of adults but also with the understandable urge of children to join a company of interest.
Indeed, suppose the authoritative figures for the child, that is, the parents, most often demonstrate deviant forms of behavior. In that case, there is a risk that the child will begin to consider such behaviors as preferable for oneself. However, the causes of deviant children’s behavior cannot be limited to, for example, their parents’ abuse of drugs or other forms of violating the law. Thus, the Department of Job and Family Services misinterpreted social learning theory.
This misinterpretation can affect the bottom line of the laws that are enacted.