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Abstract

Paperwork helps move cases through the United States foster care system, which decides whether children will be returned to their parents or become available for adoption. Though the forms help case workers come to reliable conclusions for various decisions throughout cases, the constructs and categories used in paperwork may still bias form use and outcomes. This research qualitatively analyzes 10 Michigan foster care forms as guided by the anthropological concepts of categorization and classification. Findings indicate that forms measure families against a societal baseline of acceptable care, cases are constructed in a temporal source path goal schema that associates damage with the past and care with the future, and that damage and care are radially related.

Keywords

foster care child welfare subjects of practice paperwork bureaucracy qualitative research methods and analytics

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Standards and Constructs in the Child Welfare Case File: An Anthropological Paperwork Assessment

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