Over the past two decades, the foster care system experienced an unprecedented rise in the number of children in out-of-home care, significant changes in the policy framework guiding foster care practice, and ongoing organizational impediments that complicate efforts to serve the children in foster care. This article discusses the current status of the foster care system and finds: Agencies often have difficulty providing adequate, accessible, and appropriate services for the families in their care. Children of color, particularly African-American children, are disproportionately represented in foster care, a situation which raises questions about the equity of the foster care system and threatens the developmental progress of children of color. Foster families can find the experience overwhelming and frustrating, causing many to leave foster parenting within their first year. Organizational problems such as large caseloads, high staff turnover, and data limitations compromise efforts to adequately serve and monitor families. The challenges before the foster care system are numerous, however the authors believe promising policies and practices aimed at strengthening families, supporting case workers, providing timely and adequate data, and infusing cultural competency throughout the system, can move the foster care system forward in the coming years.

The purpose of this paper is to add to the knowledge base on prevention programming by explicating the characteristics of 12 programs (out of 47) serving African American youth funded by the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP). Findings show that African American youth exhibit lower use rates than most other ethnic and racial groups, but by the time they reach ages 16 to 18, use is prevalent. Data on correlations of risk and protective factors with substance use reveal a very similar pattern of rank order in the strength of correlations for African American youth with youth who are not African American in the CSAP sample. The African American programs integrated Africentric principles and themes into other prevention strategies: education-and-awareness, risk-andprotection, and positive-alternative-interventions. The analysis shows that Africentric programming contributes to higher rates of satisfaction and perceived program importance to youth participating in the African American programs, compared to African American youth in other programs.

In 1988, the U.S. Administration on Aging reported that for the first time in history, couples had more parents than children to care for. In addition, the report indicated that women would spend 18 years caring for aging parents, as compared to 17 years caring for children. By the year 2040, the older population is expected to more than double, and the number of people age 85 and older will triple, and one half of them are likely to require assistance with one or more activities of daily living. The unprecedented growth of older persons, and in particular the projected increase in the 85-and-older population to 8.5 million by 2030, make it urgent for the nation to aggressively plan and develop caregiving resources. This chapter discusses the background and prevalence of family caregivers, the definition and profile of family caregivers, the legal authority for services to family caregivers, social work roles and practices with family caregivers, support services available to family caregivers, and the next generation of family caregiver resources.

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