Seaberg J R
Child Welfare. 1986 Sep-Oct;65(5):469-79.
The "reasonable efforts" criterion for provision of services to the families of children in foster care and to the families of children at risk of entering foster care is designed to provide for external, and presumably more objective, monitoring by a court of the quantity and quality of these services. A standard of "reasonable effort" applicable to all cases in the two populations of concern is both impractical and probably unethical. Legally there must be a case-by-case determination of "reasonable efforts" that will weigh the unique elements of each case. It is hoped that the working guideline proposed here will provide a basis in child welfare practice for minimizing potentially great variations in court decisions. The guideline begins with a list of problems, verified via an adversarial review, as to why the child(ren) entered foster care or is at risk of doing so, followed by the establishment of the relevance of proffered services to those problems, followed by documentation of a sustained effort to facilitate the use of those services.
为寄养儿童家庭以及有进入寄养机构风险的儿童家庭提供服务的“合理努力”标准，旨在让法院对这些服务的数量和质量进行外部的、想必也是更客观的监督。适用于这两类相关人群所有案例的“合理努力”标准既不切实际，也可能不符合道德规范。从法律角度看，必须逐案确定“合理努力”，权衡每个案例的独特因素。希望这里提出的工作指南能为儿童福利实践提供一个基础，以尽量减少法院判决中可能出现的巨大差异。该指南首先列出一系列问题，这些问题通过对抗性审查得到核实，涉及儿童进入寄养机构的原因或面临进入寄养机构的风险，接着确定所提供服务与这些问题的相关性，然后记录为促进这些服务的使用而持续做出的努力。
