Analysis Of Two Agencies Related To Child Abuse And Maltreatment
The name of the agency that I chose is Arizona Families F. I. R. S. T. During the lecture, we have discussed the parent’s risk factors of child maltreatment and the possible outcomes of the risks. When drawing a comparison between non-abusive parents and physically abusive parents, abusive parents have relatively poor stress coping and anger management skills than non-abusive parents. The abusive parents report more anxiety, stress and tend to express emotional difficulties. The characteristics typical of abusive parents are low frustration tolerance, anger control problems and most importantly, substance abuse.
The substance use is one of the significant risk factors for child abuse, and there is plenty number of children who live with a parent who abuses alcohol or drugs. Those children have a higher risk of experiencing child abuse than children of non-abusive parents: Such as physical, sexual, emotional or neglect. Also, they tend to prioritize a time spend using substances rather than time spent with their children. Which makes impossible for them to fulfill an appropriate parental role. In the state of Arizona, there is an agency that deals with the issue of a substance abuse. According to the official website, the Arizona Families F. I. R. S. T (AFF) was established to respond to the issue of community substance abuse. The AFF offers prevention and treatment programs for those parents who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. The programs help parents to achieve an ability to conduct an appropriate parental role. Also, the programs provide an opportunity for the parents to overcome the barrier of substance abuse. Which will help them achieve a permanent family reunification, self-sufficiency, and an ability to regulate substance use. What makes the agency important is their goal of the programs. The goal of the program is to offer an intervention to parents and reduce the abuse of dependence on alcohol and drugs. Therefore, the agency can establish children’s safety at their home, and reduce the risk of child abuse/neglect.
The AFF was established as a partnership between two agencies. Which are the Department of Economic Security (DES) and the Department of Health Services (DHS). The agency has received $500, 000 federal grants in three years. The agency has more than 1000 CPS and AFF stuff work together. It provides a community-based substance abuse treatment service to either the parents whose substance abuse is significant barrio to maintain their parental roles and a person whose substance use is a significant barrio to obtaining employment. The service is provided by TERROS Health in central, Pima, and Southeast region of Arizona. It is also provided by Arizona Partnership for children (AZPAC) in a northern region, and Southern Arizona Behavioral Services (SEABHS) in the south-east region in the state of Arizona.
The type of risk factors the agency target is substance abuse because children of drugs and alcohol-dependent parents are more likely to experience a variety of child maltreatment than children of non-abusive parents. Therefore, the goal of the agency is to reduce parents’ dependency on alcohol or drugs and overcome the barrier of substance abuse. Also, to promote parents to spend more time with their children to establish a stable relationship between parents and children. As a first step of the treatment, the agency conducts a face-to-face engagement program to the service participants. Then, the agency coordinates a program that applies to a recipient’s situation. The program provides an intervention program that is made to reduce the recipient’s dependency on alcohol and other drugs. Overall, there is a total of seven prevention or intervention programs. The array of services that the agency offers are substance abuse assessment/awareness, outpatient treatment, residential treatment, recovery maintenance services, and auxiliary services and care coordination. For example, the service of substance abuse assessment/awareness promotes awareness about the possible effects of substance abuse on their body and family life. Then, provides an appropriate intervention and treatment to a participant. Also, the service of residential treatment provides a group and family counseling. During the treatment, a child can stay with their own parents and discuss the risk of substance use as a family. With these services, the agency assists the family life in recovery.
My first impression of the agency is positive, and I thought it offers a quite a successful program. The strength of the agency is the effectiveness and critical outcomes of the programs. According to the report, those individuals who had an issue with substance abuse had engaged in treatment at relatively high rates and most of them finished up the program with outstanding results. According to the data, over 5, 000 individuals have engaged in the AFF program during the past year, and 96% of them encouraged to seek treatment service throughout the year. Also, about 58% of individuals who have engaged and completed the program were able to resist the temptation of alcohol and drugs during the program. These data suggest that a majority of participants were satisfied with the service and were able to engage with high motivation. Moreover, children whose parents participated in the program ends up being reunited with their parents at a high rate. About 82% of children reunified with their parents and 18% of them found a permanent family through guardianship or relatives. Also, the parents who engaged in the program experienced less recurrence of maltreatment. Therefore, the programs seem to fulfill the need of participants and are effective enough for them to keep up their motivation.
On the other hand, the shortcoming of the agency is AFF can receive a false information by CPS. The barrier that program have is obtaining a sufficient, accurate information from CPS. According to AFF coordinator, the participant engagement has slightly decreased, because CPS agents sometimes have insufficient knowledge about AFF programs and fail to send clients to appropriate agencies. For instance, CPS send a client to separate agencies for domestic violence treatment and substance abuse treatment even though one agency can perform both treatment services. When clients are assigned to have extra unnecessary work, they lose their motivation on the service and end up failing the program. To sum up, the advocate argues the agency provides on-point service and are effective enough to motivate many clients. The counter side argues the program sometimes provide clients an unnecessary service and lowers the motivation of clients. To balance out the opinions, false reporting issue must be solved. For the solution, AFF coordinators have been attending CPS training for a new employee to educate them about the types of program that AFF could offer and importance of providing accurate information. Also, AFF workers have been working together with the CPS investigators on their initial visit to help them make appropriate removal decisions. With these efforts made by AFF, the accuracy of the CPS report will increase, and more appropriate services will be providing to clients. Therefore, clients are more likely to motivate a program and the effectiveness of the services should increase.
The name of another agency that I chose is Arizona School of the Deaf and Blind. During the lecture on school bullying, we have discussed a type of students who tend to become a target of bullies, and their characteristics as a risk factor. The victim of bullies tends to be a student who is unassertive, socially isolated, and physically weaker than the others. Most importantly, a student with abnormal appearance is more frequently targeted for bullying than a student with an ordinally-looking student. For instance, the overweight children and children with some form of disabilities could be at the greater risk of becoming the victim of bullying. The situation could get worse especially when the form of a disability could be perceivable by others. For instance, a student who has a physical, intellectual disability and sensory disabilities are at more risk of being a target of bullies. Since they are quite vulnerable to physical attacks, bullies perceive them as an easy target. Therefore, they have a high risk of receiving both physical and psychological harassment. Such a phenomenon could happen due to a wicked belief of being disabled as a social stigma, and people having a little empathy to them. In Tucson, Arizona, there is an agency that addresses an issue of bullying of people with severe disabilities. The agency is named Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind (ASDB).
What makes this agency important is, the place is providing a safe environment and special supports for some children with relatively severe disabilities. In another word, the agency can prevent a child with disabilities from bullying and a danger latent in their school lives. Also, since the agency is specialized in supporting a student with disabilities, a student there could receive a special support that regular school does not provide. For instance, it can provide an intervention program to a child who is either blind and deaf. Also, it can provide an intervention program to their parents or caretakers to let them have a greater understanding of children’s challenges and appropriate way of interaction.
In the year 1912, the first state legislature of Arizona enacted a provision to form a school for the children who are deaf and blind. The Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and Blind (ASDB) was first established in Tucson and served to 19 students who are deaf or blind. The agency receives a financial support from any donors who are interested to support ASDB. The school is both a governmental subdivision and an educational institution. Because of that, anyone who donated to the organization ASDB receives a tax credit up to $200 for a single individual and $400 for a married couple. Therefore, the school receives financial support from the state and donation made by residents in the state of Arizona. The risk factor that the agency target is children’s form of disabilities since they have more chance of receiving both physical and psychological harassment from a child without disabilities. Also, if they lack a communication skill and special supports on the education, they are at risk of having a brutal life. Because of that, ASDB’s long-term goal is to let a student with a disability to acquire an adaptive daily living skill. Which makes the students perform the daily living task safely, efficiently and independently after their graduation. Therefore, they become a successful student and employee.
The school serves over 2000 children from birth to 22 years old who have sensory disabilities, especially a child who is blind, deaf and deafblind. There are approximately 220 teachers works at ASDB, and they offer a variety of support to students within education through daily lives. There are two schools that ASDB operates: One school is for the blind children, and other for the deaf. The school campus is in Tucson and Phoenix. Which currently offer education program and support service to 100 students from pre-school to 12th grades. The Tucson campus offers a day program and residential programs. Which allow students to choose to live in on-campus and receive an extra support from professionals. The Phoenix campus was established later in 1967 and mainly offer a program to children in preschool through 12th grade. In addition to an education program, the school emphasizes on providing counseling for post-school transition planning and language skill class in both American Sign Language and English. Also, the agency operates statewide early childhood and family education programs to promote a greater understanding of appropriate interaction with a child who has sensory difficulties. Both programs work in partnership with the agency of Arizona Early Intervention Programs. Which offers an early intervention service programs to infants and toddler with sensory disabilities in the state of Arizona. Moreover, there are five regional cooperatives. Those cooperatives serve and support a deaf, blind or deafblind student from preschool through 12 grades who attend to a local school.
To sum up, before I gather an information on the agency, I had never seen nor heard about the school that is established for a child who is having severe disabilities. Also, I have never had a chance to interact with a person with disabilities and I know almost nothing about them. Since they can’t obtain an information via voice or letters, I’ve always wondered how they are completing their compulsory education and acquire an ability to communicate with their peers. My first impression on the agency was interesting and enlightening when I understand how it works. Based on the research, I think the strength of the agency is that it provides a safe environment for the students which protect them from bullying at a local school. The disabilities are the risk factor of becoming a victim of school bullying, and they have a higher chance of encountering either physical and emotional abuse. Since the school provides an environment where only children with disabilities, and peers who can emphasize others with disabilities, it succeeded the reduction of school bullying occurrences.
Another strength could be they can offer a special support for children with severe disabilities, which local school can’t provide. It helps children to acquire an adaptive daily living skill to live safely as possible and teaches a way to communicate with others in society. The shortcoming of the programs they offer is the lower quality of education. By comparing a local school and ASDB, students in a local school may receive a higher quality of education since they only focus on learning compulsory subjects. In contrast to that, a student of ASDB has an extra curriculum in addition to compulsory subjects, such as sign languages and living skills. Since they have more materials to learn, amount of the time the school can offer for each class is shorter and amount of information they can put into a class become less. The classes may go on with slow pace with a sign language, and the level of education might not suitable for some children as well.
Therefore, the school must sacrifice the quality of classes due to the extra programs. I think the agency balances advocacy and empiricism by providing a student with a disability an option to either attend to ASDB to receive a full-time service or attend to a local school and receive a service outside of school program. The agency allows children to have access to better education while receiving a support from the agency. The agency is willing to provide a support as much as possible to those children by arranging its program based on a child’s school schedule. Therefore, the agency can adjust its program to help children with disabilities even though they don’t attend to ASDB. Which balance out an advocacy and empiricism on an education.
