Week 5 Assignment

Introduction

Child Welfare League of America Organization (CWLA) is composed of private and public entities committed to ensuring the security, perpetuation, and welfare of children, young people, and families. The organization lobbies for policies, enhanced operation implementation, and coordinated approaches that promote positive results for the targets. Several issues have been established as challenges facing children in the country. These include aspects like; immigration, education, shelter, and health. Moreover, the poor living conditions and environmental influences of violence have contributed to the challenges faced by the targets. These challenges hinder the ability of the families, youths, and children to flourish in their life endeavors. This emphasizes the importance of the organization’s efforts in advocating on behalf of the affected. Resultantly, the children get to experience an unbiased opportunity of realizing and nourishing their goals and ambitions. Furthermore, the families and communities are encouraged to be more supportive and caring to them. These actions have succeeded in reducing the number of street children or families; moreover, criminal activities tend to reduce in the neighborhoods since the chain of passing the unacceptable habits is broken. Therefore, through the communication and implementation of the organization's plan, the communities, families, and groups in the society are motivated to promote the lives of children and the youth in the country. They realize that children and the youth are the future leaders of society, hence, a source of hope for them.

Impact of Information

The CWLA is committed to creating awareness among the members of society. They envision all children being brought up amidst safe environs, with caring families and encouraging communities. They ensure that the children are attached and fully aware of their culture, religion, and race. This will enable them to embrace their personality and differences, which makes them confident and reduces the effects of discrimination based on these factors. The organization values integrity, fairness, justice, nobility, and transparency. Moreover, characteristics such as respect, innovativeness, inclusivity, coordination, agility, and competency are cherished ("National blueprint for excellence in child welfare: executive summary," n.d.). Through education and the spread of awareness, these aspects are emulated by the public. Thus, the communities tend to embrace these virtues, which transform the society and how they treat children and one another. The aspect of an effective family and supportive community is thus promoted, and children can acquire suitable environments that contribute to their success in life. The CWLA emphasizes the importance of shared responsibility and leadership. The communities are encouraged to join in the roles that involve working with the children and families at all levels. These could be through managerial posts, advisory activities, or chaperoning of focus groups. This way, they directly impact the children's performance through positive engagement. The community leaders can learn how to coordinate people in the society by ensuring that all important aspects concerning children's and families' welfare are taken care of. They also ensure proper delegation of activities in the society to promote efficiency in realizing these goals. The information gained from the awareness enables the people in the society to be fully engaged in the development and progression of the society. The engagement approaches are positive in focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses. They are trauma-informed by establishing what happened to the families and children rather than asking what is wrong with them. Therefore, through the fair consideration of the youth in the society for job opportunities and unbiased involvement in the development programs for the society, the community tends to view them in a more positive perspective and appreciates them and their work.

The organization has been in operation for a long period compared to other child welfare organizations. This bestows the association with more experience and expertise in handling the children's welfare within and around the country. The CWLA is unique because it incorporates private and public organizations in its programs and activities ("The Child Welfare League of America," n.d.). This sends a strong message to other organizations worldwide on the need to coordinate with others to ensure prosperity and success in executing activities and realizing goals. Communities and individuals are also encouraged to work in coordination toward achieving their goals. The involvement of several people and organizations in a given goal promotes the diversity of perspectives brought to the table. This variety enables society to establish the best methods of solving possible problems. CWLA is considered to be diversified in the services they offer to the nation. These may include; family foster care, adoption, programs offering guidance to teenage parents, managing mental health issues, and residential group care, among others ("Child Welfare League of America (CWLA)," 2022). This diversification of programs serves as a rich information source for other organizations. The information and tactics of expanding services for other member agencies can be passed through designated program experts. The acquired strategies can be used to expand to various outreach programs. This indirectly impacts the communities and individuals in that more transformational programs are set up within the country, ensuring that more people are involved in promoting people's lives in society. Therefore, the continued incorporation and expansion of these programs will lead to an eventual haven for the people, where children and the youth will grow in conducive environments with the love of family and social support. The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) works closely with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to eliminate the adverse effects of isolation and confinement. The two actions have been incorporated as intervention measures for people against mentally unstable people. However, this strategy was highly risky for the people involved ("Achieving Better Outcomes for Children and Families Reducing restraint and seclusion," 2004). The awareness created regarding the dangers led to the establishment of research and programs that prevented the occurrence of these risks in society. Risks include significant injuries, death, retraumatization for trauma survivors, and mental torture. The individuals and members of the communities are thus forced to establish alternative safer methods of dealing with such challenges in society. This, in turn, promotes innovativeness among people. Moreover, the aspect of humanity is derived from these actions by the people, where actions carried out as mitigation measures for societal problems are encouraged to be humane and caring. Therefore, the spread of awareness of these actions by the association has positively impacted people's lives by encouraging growth, changing their perceptions from negative to positive, and promoting innovation that leads to more effective ways of doing things and solving problems.

Information Legitimacy

The digital environment has become a significant part of people's lives worldwide. Especially after the COVID 19 pandemic, the need to digitalize most activities was deemed necessary. The digital era has provided a variety of opportunities for the people, especially in promoting children's welfare; however, it has also posed a huge risk (UNICEF, 2022). Social workers have been using the digital platform to carry out their activities easily. Emergency services have also been made possible to deliver despite the location of the social worker and the recipient. The information relayed between the two parties could be through phone calls, messages, emails, or social media chats. These forms of communication have made service delivery more effective and timely. The information relayed using calls is considered valid since it is received directly from the other person and, thus, can be relied on. Changing the other person's voice may be difficult to execute. On the other hand, the digital era has introduced the aspect of data insecurity where data can be hacked and manipulated against the wish of a device’s owner. Therefore, this can lead to the spreading of false information across digital networks.

From ancient times, society was used to shape the characters and norms of the people and the children. The Child Welfare League of America was established to maintain these aspects. Their goal was to promote a safe environment within the society for the peaceful growth of children. The families were to be strengthened, and communities were to offer support to the children. This way, the children would develop positive characters influenced by society. However, in the digital age, children's characters are highly influenced by social media (Björktomta & Aarum Hansen, 2018). Information in social media is intricate and mixed. There exist sources of information that provide valid information that can be backed up with references from literature and physical occurrences in society. This kind of information is considered valid and resourceful. Moreover, some information encourages goodwill through persuasion to carry out certain tasks like donations to help others. The emergence of social media has seen the rise of conpeople who trick people into donating money, yet they intend to use such funds for their selfish gains. This has mostly been associated with welfare association programs. On the other hand, some people have used these platforms as a medium to convey their negative perspectives and attitudes towards certain factors in society. The information portrayed in these perspectives may incite ill intentions like terrorism, political unrest, or social deviance among children. Therefore, the validity of information from digital platforms should be questioned when analyzing it.

The digital platform has enhanced transparency in the actions of the people and organizations worldwide. Through digital media, The Children Welfare League of America has been able to create awareness of its activities and intentions by reaching people globally. This has contributed to a massive involvement and participation in its activities by people either directly or indirectly through the member agencies. This shows the validity of the information they spread through their websites, social media platforms, or emails. The information on the works done by this association is considered credible based on the on-ground evidence of the work done by the members reflecting the experience they have with the children and families through live video broadcasts as they carry out their humanitarian activities and the organization’s goals. Other welfare associations can use this strategy to prove the validity of their information. These could also be conveyed through live videos of testimonies from the members of the organizations, and the families and people of the community that benefits from the assistance and intervention approaches by the welfare associations. Most children in this digital era have eliminated the links between them and their parents. Contrary to the intentions of the CWLA, children, and youths have received advice and guidance from peers through online platforms (Keeley & Little, 2017). The information gathered from these avenues is considered invalid since it is obtained from non-knowledgeable and inexperienced people. Professionals in the relevant problem areas should be responsible for providing valid information. The peer information is mostly based on rumors, while some youths may say what they think the others want to hear. Thus, the welfare association like CWLA should fight to ensure that their aims are maintained and the perpetuity of the family and community support by enhancing their strategies on the media platforms. Children have been considered increasingly involved users of technology in the digital era. The presentation of information in the digital platform can significantly affect how they execute their rights and how their rights can be supported or neglected (Verdoodt, 2021). A legitimate representation of the information will encourage them to air their relevant opinions that will be considered when planning for children and youths on social platforms. An illegitimate representation will trigger violence and a lack of harmony in the platforms, denying them from exercising their rights. Therefore, the digital era is complicated regarding the legitimacy of the information provided on digital platforms. It is the work of the parents, guardians, and stakeholders to contribute to the development of standards that can be put in place to minimize the negative impact of sharing illegitimate information on digital platforms.

Conclusion

The efforts of the CWLA have increased the cohesion among families and promoted community support for children and youth. These have enabled the children to grow in a conducive environment that allows them to explore their capabilities fully. The establishment of the awareness programs has provided information to society, individuals, and other organizations from which a lot of impacts have been felt. For instance, individuals have established the importance of supporting children at the family and community level, other organizations have learned the importance of coordination among the public and private sectors towards the achievement of common goals, and the community has learned the need to participate in the involvement of activities that focus on the growth of the children. The rise of the digital era has enhanced clarity and transparency. This has contributed both positively and negatively to society. The impacts on the CWLA and other welfare associations have been significant in terms of the legitimacy of the information. Unreliable sources that alter information for their benefits have compromised the validity of most welfare programs. Children have also been subjected to illegitimate information meant to arouse violence, disobedience, and insubordination among them. This has compromised the objectives of the CWLA of creating a suitable supportive environment that ensures the child's positive growth. However, society and all stakeholders should work together to ensure they are up-to-date and aware of technological and digital advancements. This way, they are capable of establishing ways of minimizing digital misinformation among children and the youth.

References

Achieving better outcomes for children and families reducing restraint and seclusion. Citeseerx.ist.psu.edu. (2004). https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.690.7074&rep=rep1&type=pdf.

Björktomta, S., & Aarum Hansen, H. (2018). Child welfare services and social media – childhood, being, and becoming in a digital society. Croatian Medical Journal, 59(2), 90-92. https://doi.org/10.3325/cmj.2018.59.90

Child Welfare League of America (CWLA). Idealist.org. (2022). https://www.idealist.org/en/nonprofit/20c481db225c4dd39fb1b584ab451292-child-welfare-league-of-america-cwla-washington.

Keeley, B., & Little, C. (2017). The State of the World’s Children 2017: Children in a Digital World. UNICEF. 3 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017.

National blueprint for excellence in child welfare executive summary. Cwla.org. https://www.cwla.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/BlueprintExecutiveSummary1.pdf.

The Child Welfare League of America. Cryamerica.org.  https://cryamerica.org/site/projects/project-we-support/the-child-welfare-league-of-america.html.

UNICEF. (2022). Legislating for the digital age. Unicef.org.  https://www.unicef.org/media/120386/file/Legislating%20for%20the%20digital%20age_Global%20Guide.pdf.

Verdoodt, V. (2021). Children’s rights in the digital environment: Moving from theory to practice.   https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8728500/file/8728503