The Role of Culture in Child Dependency Cases

 

Cultural Connections for Foster Children

 

Last year I was asked to develop a training for the Arizona Court Improvement Program to address the role of culture in child dependency cases.  As I prepared the presentation, I wasn't sure where to begin to address the question, "what is role of culture in child dependency cases?   From my FCRB experience, I know that Section III (D) in the DCS Progress Report addresses “efforts to maintain cultural connections, including opportunities for the child to build cultural awareness, identity, and involvement.”

 

From a long list of definitions of “culture,” I selected, “society’s common foundation of beliefs and behaviors and its concepts of how people should conduct themselves” (Hunter School of Social Work web page.) I then began putting together the presentation with the idea of addressing national and ethnic cultural differences and how we assure that the child’s cultural “beliefs, behaviors, and concepts” remain in the child’s life as he moves through the foster care system.  Pretty straight forward.  

 

But it quickly became apparent that not every child is tied to an ethnic or national culture.  My grandmother was born in Prague, Bohemia, and came to the US as a child bringing her Bohemian (note the capital “B”) ways with her.  Her daughter, my mother, cooked Bohemian food, knitted “continental” style, spoke to her mother in Bohemian. She had clearly adopted some of her mother’s culture.  My brothers and I have some curiosity about Bohemia (now Czech Republic) but no real connection to the Bohemian culture.

 

So we make efforts to assure that those children who are tied to an ethnic or national culture keep those connections.  But, I soon realized that cultural influence extends far beyond just ethnic/national culture.  Additional cultural influences include the foster child’s family, neighborhood, church/organizations, and school.  Each of these “cultures” (aka “microsystems”) have common beliefs and behaviors and a child placed in foster care loses connections to all of them in one swift move. As a foster child, I clearly remember the experience of being placed into different foster homes.  It was almost paralyzing.  And it didn’t matter whether it was kinship or non-kinship placement, or if the foster parents and their home were perfect in every way; the rules were different from my home “culture” and I didn’t know what they were.  In one “kinship” placement, my brother and I went to a new school for three weeks.  We were lost in that particular school culture.  Nothing was the same; not the school work, the teaching methods, the rules, and no one answered our main question, “how come no one is wearing their uniforms?” (We were Catholic school kids and that was true “culture shock.”).  We were also far away from our church where we were both involved with Scout troops and, of course, we did not know our new neighbors (church and neighborhood - two more cultures lost.)  But, for us, it was more of a temporary stressor because we knew we would be reunited with our mother and older brothers eventually.*

 

For children who are abused/neglected, the “culture shock” is much worse.  Children who have been physically abused, or who have not had adequate food, managed to adapt to their abusive environments for survival.  Perhaps they learned how to sneak and hide food or steal change to buy food; or they became adept at sensing when it was safe to approach a parent and when it wasn’t.  Most of these children have spent their entire lives in abusive/neglectful homes.  It’s all they know; and their neural pathways for their specific survival behaviors are strong.  When they are removed and placed in foster care, they enter unfamiliar territory with unknown rules and new people who might or might not hurt them. They are unsure of how to get food; nervous about attending a new school, and have no neighborhood friends to play with after school.

 

In their new placement, these children may display behaviors that we would consider “survival” tactics in their abusive homes but “odd” in their foster homes e.g., hoarding food, stealing money, or raising their arms in self-defense when approached by an adult.  That was their home culture.  At school they may be so far behind that they become lost or just give up trying (every move through foster care results in 4-6 months loss of academic progress in school.).  Regardless of the quality of their care, their removal from home and school cultures may be unsettling because the abuse and neglect way of life is all they know.   

 

It becomes apparent that, in addition to assuring connections to ethnic/national cultures, we also need to consider connections to the child’s “microsystems.”  So we ask, always with the safety of the child in mind, “Is it possible for the child to remain in the same school (in accordance with ARS 15-816.01) and/or continue to participate in church/scouting activities?  Can we enlist the assistance of safe family members for transportation to and from these locations to help keep the child’s connection to friends and family strong?  How can we safely help the child preserve some connection to his extended family, neighborhood, school, church, extracurricular activity? Children removed from their homes will always have difficulty adjusting to a new environment, but the more “cultural” connections we can maintain for them, the less “culturally shocking” their move will be. 

 

 

*We were in foster care each time our mother, who was battling cancer, was hospitalized, which was quite often, but we returned home when she did. We returned to foster care after she died and eventually were placed with an aunt and uncle. Our older brothers were self-sufficient