Family Support and Public Policy

Families in America have different issues to that they deal with. There are cases of divorce, child care, youth requirements and so many other things.

Most people will always want a healthy and happy family. It is not easy to maintain a happy and health family and therefore there are support programs to assist in many issues involving families. In modern day America, many families are no longer like before. The families are not nuclear alone, but consist of more than a mother, father and children. The families have changed to be extended such that in a family, there could be an adopted children, friends or just relatives.

Some other families due to divorce or just separation, have single parents. These different families that have developed in America therefore require different types of family support. Family support involves the care of children and important issues in the family, the care of youth under the age of 18, and other support given to the parents to maintain a healthy and happy family. The changing family is one factor that needs to be considered in formation of family support programs. Family policies are meant to promote, protect, and define American family (Strach, 2007).

Public policies and family are equated to form the family policies that define the American family life such as adoption laws, leave and welfare programs and state level marriage. These policies have to be considered in the family support programs, for example, family support offers adoption guidance and rules (Strach, 2007). In this paper, the public policy is discussed in relation to family support in Los Angeles county. It first explains public policy and family support in general before discussing family support in Los Angeles.Background Information Public Policy Public policies on families are decisions made about the family in order to offer protection and define the American family.

Several policies can therefore be formulated depending on the situation on the ground. In Los Angeles, a county of California State, there is a constitutional amendment that seeks to eliminate same sex marriage. A survey with this information indicates that 55% of the California state residents disagree with the constitutional amendment which is yet to be passed (PPIC, 2008).This is an example of a public policy that relates to family issues. Families have so many issues that affect them or affect their well being.

The role of the government is to ensure their safety, which is the main reason why family policies are formulated. Examples of areas where policies are formulated are such as in adoption of the children, child care and the rights of a child, family financial support, divorce cases, marriage definitions and conditions, and many other areas (Strach, 2007).Public policies on family support for example give rules and regulation on adoption of children, which shows who is a qualified person to adopt a child, what conditions should a child be adopted in, what qualifies a child to be adopted and so many other conditions. The policies are not fixed and can be changed with time based on the changing family. An example is in the family support that the members of the family are faced with different problems that were not experienced in families before. Same sex families may have problems and need support to solve the problems.

If there are no policies to guide such families, then problems would not be easy to solve within the American family. The society may find that same sex marriage is not appropriate, the government has to identify the problems of the family and look for policies that if implemented, will assist in solving the problems. Some other cases involve parents or one of the parents, for example fathers who have neglected their responsibility of supporting the family. In a case like this, the government has to make decisions on how to deal with the case since the women cannot force their husbands to provide financial support.Public policy in this case will be centered around the noncustodial fathers and their responsibility in the family. Issues to be addressed in this case include, paternity of children born to unmarried women, child custody in cases of divorce, and issues on how to prevent teenage males from becoming fathers at an early age.

The aim of such decisions are to create awareness to the definition of an American family. The government does not want a bad reputation of having bad family types or be accused of negligence on the people of the nation in maintaining moral behavior.It therefore has to have an appropriate definition of what an American family is. There is no way the government can support the lack of responsibility of men in supporting their families. It has to fight to create a tradition of family support, as a move to accomplish its roles in family protection and support. A problem though has been noted in the federal, local and state government that, it only formulates policies in support of the family if whatever is affecting the family affects the welfare costs of the nation.

This should not be the case.If the role of the government is to provide policies that should protect the families and support them, then public policy should cover all issues involving family protection and support (Strach, 2007). Several policies formulated about family concern protection such as those on children adoption, marriage, divorce and childcare, but it has been shown that arising problems within the families are not given much consideration if the situation does not affect the welfare of the state if at state level, federal or local if at those levels too (Strach, 2007).American Family Support There are so many issues in the family that need to be dealt with.

According to the information given by Family Support America, many families are dealing with different issues such as divorce, blended families, broken homes and family make up that are not traditional. Other issues arise due to factors such as being a single parent, having step parents, step siblings, and raising the house hold in such different situations (Family support America, 2008). Parents may feel that their families are out of place and therefore be stressed.Families with same sex parents and adopted children also have their own family issues.

This is evidence that there are very many different types of families these days in America. All these families need support in different ways depending on their problems. Some have problems with illnesses that put strain on the family finances and therefore a lot of stress to the family. Such illnesses are alcoholism and depression. Family support needs giving attention to the needs of the family such as the above indicated case.

American family support involves providing information and support for families with foster children or families intending to adopt children. It is therefore concerned with the welfare of the children. Information provided by Family Support America indicates that family support should involve counseling of the children, to be able to find it easier to stay in their foster homes with few problems (Family Support America, 2008). This is because these children always have different problems due to previous exposures. They therefore have to be counseled to be able to accept the new homes.Families always experience stress due to children just from their birth and as the child develops.

Children need a lot in their care. Parents should therefore be able to cope with the stress of caring for a developing child. Some families may not find it easy to deal with the stress caused by child care requirements and so seek assistance to help them solve the problems of stress or cope with it (Family support America). Family Support in Los Angeles County and Public Policy The county is a local government level that the government uses to run its operations.The county therefore offer the services of the government.

Since the government has policy makers that provide decisions on how its operations should be run, the county has programs or strategies on how family support should be managed. The functions of Los Angeles county in provision of family support are influenced by public policy. This county has various areas or systems through which it manages the provision of family support to the people of Los Angeles. The department responsible for this function is called the Department of Children and Family Services.

Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services. The aim of this department is to ensure that the child's welfare services are of quality and the children in this county grow up safe, educated, healthy and with permanent families (DCFS, 2008). Accomplishment of these aims are through three ways, improving permanence, improving safety and reducing reliance on out of home care (DCFS, 2008). Improving performance is done by shortening the permanency timeliness of children removed from their families with different aims such as adoption, reunification and kinship, and by reducing the emancipation population.

Improving safety is accomplished by trying to reduce child abuse and neglect rates in the new families after investigation on cases of child abuse among children, so that a previously affected child is well taken care of to avoid threats of abuse to the child again. Reduction of out of home care dependence is done by expansion of alternative strategies that are community based (DCFS, 2008). Role of Department of Children and Family Services in Family Support Los Angeles county's Department of Children and Family Services offer family support through the three described ways.In the case of ensuring safety for the children, the department deals with child abuse prevention. It offers information about how to prevent child abuse, signs of child abuse, what parents should do in ensuring respect and not child abuse and many other issues on child abuse (DCFS, 2008).

Concerning child adoption and permanency resources, the county recruits support families, offers studies and prepares them for the adoption in order to provide loving, stable, healthy and permanent homes to the children. The county in family support is concerned with allocation of resources on the homeless children, their health and many others.It is also shown that in family support, Los Angeles county has policies on marriage, divorce and parental responsibility. Other important support services by the county are, provision of education, life skills training, employment and housing to the youth and housing, education and health care to the children. Why This Topic Deserves Discussion Family support is the assistance given to the many different families to ensure that the families are fine considering the health and the major family issues. There are so many issues in a family that parents, children and other family members consider to be important.

These are issues such as, respect in children, parent-child relationship, normal growth and development of children and parent support to the children. All these issues have to be considered in order to build a healthy family. It is not easy to have a healthy family if there are so many issues to handle in a family. The other problem is that it is not easy to have a healthy family and maintain happiness because of the different family types that have arisen. In modern America, there are nuclear families, extended families, single parent families and same sex families.The life these families lead are different, the people in the families are different in character and behavior, and the issues in these families therefore differ.

Research has shown that it is difficult to build homes with adjusted and happy family members due to the different situations families are in. The family support programs therefore play an important role in supporting families. Families have problems with their finances, schedules and emotions. These are affected by the family composition as has been noted, and in some instances, diseases.Some families always have problems with illnesses such as depression and alcoholism due to the lack of understanding by the members not suffering from the illness. This situation causes tension in a family that will need counseling for the family members to go back to their normal lives.

Family support programs offer counseling services for such kind of families. As had been indicated earlier, the families of today are no longer just nuclear, they constitute, father, mother, child and step child or step children. People adopt children in their families and may need assistance in handling of these adopted children.There are children homes with children brought to the children's home under different circumstances. Some children may have had alcoholic mothers and suffered neglect, affecting their normal development, others may have just been taken to the homes out of the parents' will, while some may be due to lack of homes.

These children have different behaviors depending on their origin. When adopted, the new parents may need assistance with the child. Family support offers information on adoption. Apart from handling adopted children, family support programs also involve caring for the children.Children in there development, undergo so many problems in the different stages of development.

An example is in the adolescent stage. The behavior or actions of an adolescent child changes and the understanding of the parents and other family members may not accommodate such behavior. The child may have problems in life because of this and be stressed. For a happy family, assistance is needed in such cases to help parents and family members understand children.

There are so many other issues in child care that need assistance too, so family support is of importance. These are the major reasons why it is important to discuss family support.