siblings in foster care

[aron shlonsky <as2156@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<x-flowed>
Dear listmanager, I forgot contact info on the previous post.  Please 
post this version.

DUE DATE JUST ASSIGNED: Dec 31, 2003

Call for Papers

For children entering foster care, consideration of family is often 
limited to relationships between individual children and their 
biological parents, but rarely extends to siblings despite the fact that 
the majority of children in care have a brother or sister. The 
relationship between siblings often spans a lifetime and, for children 
being removed from their parents, the continued presence of siblings may 
be crucial for maintaining a sense of safety and emotional continuity. 
Strong developmental effects, both positive and negative, have been 
linked to siblings in non-maltreating families (Dunn, 1989; Briant, 
1989, Cicirelli, 1995; Sulloway, 1996), indicating that this element of 
family life should not be ignored.  However, there have been few studies 
of children in out-of-home care that control for the sibling effect, let 
alone studies that model its impact on child outcomes.  Thus, while 
child welfare workers are charged with maintaining sibling groups 
whenever possible, there is little evidence with which to guide crucial 
placement decisions, and workers may be limited by scant foster care 
resources, differing permanency timelines among siblings of diverse 
ages, and the varying needs of individual family members.  This special 
issue of Children and Youth Services Review will draw from 
multidisciplinary sources to produce the first peer reviewed compilation 
of articles addressing this important, but neglected area of child 
welfare research.  Manuscript submissions will be considered that 
include investigations specifically addressing the impact of sibling 
separation, methodological strategies for dealing with the complex task 
of including siblings in statistical models, and position papers or 
policy analyses specifically related to the maintenance of sibling ties 
in out-of-home care.  Please contact: Aron Shlonsky, Assistant 
Professor, Columbia University School of Social Work, 601 W.113th St., 
NY, NY  10025. email: as2156@columbia.edu.

-- 
Aron Shlonsky
Assistant Professor
Columbia University
School of Social Work
622 W.113th St.
New York, NY  10025
212-854-6514
as2156@columbia.edu

</x-flowed>