An Investigation of the Informed Consent Being Rendered Under PL 94-142 on Behalf of Handicapped Children in Foster Care

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the level of accuracy and agreement of social worker and foster parent representatives of handicapped foster children with respect to their understanding of eight Local Education Agency (LEA) Team special education decisions. The accuracy and agreement of these representatives were examined under four quasi-experimental conditions of representative involvement: when both, neither, or either of the two representatives had been involved in the foster children's last IEP staffing. Subjects consisted of 96 sets of social workers and foster parents in two states, Kansas and Massachusetts. Procedures consisted of conducting face-to-face interviews with subjects in order to obtain their responses regarding the eight LEA Team decisions of: (a) classification, (b) e l i g i b i l i t y , (c) program placement, (d) IEP goals, (e) IEP objectives, (f) responsibility for service delivery, (g) frequency of service delivery, (h) duration of service delivery. Three sets of survey instruments were developed and field tested for this study. Recordings of subject responses were obtained and scored for accuracy and agreement of the two sets of representatives. The foster care representatives 1 responses were compared to those of a control group of natural parent subjects who were matched according to the LEA of the handicapped children under Condition 4, both representatives involved in the last IEP staffing. Results showed significant disagreement between social worker and foster parent on five LEA Team decisions under the four conditions of representative involvement. Six significant results were obtained with respect to social worker and foster parent accuracy under the four conditions. Comparisons between the foster care representatives and the natural parent representatives revealed significant differences between the two groups in terms of the magnitude of their accuracy and their agreement across the eight LEA Team decisions. The investigator concluded that the special education representation of the handicapped foster children examined in this study lacked the consistency in agreement and accuracy that is necessary for informed consent to be rendered on their behalf.