User:Astebbins/Evaluate an Article

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

Trauma- and violence-informed care
I decided to choose this article because it was one of the only articles that could fit within the sector section of this assignment. There are no specific articles that pertain specifically to foster care treatment methods that I have been writing about in my essays on Wikipedia. The majority of the foster care treatment methods that I have been researching incorporate trauma- and violence- informed care. This Wikipedia page is fairly sparse when it comes to content, which can make it easier to edit and add new relevant material.

Foster care in the United States
I am am still deciding which article to add to for my area sector for this assignment. I will use this opportunity to look at Foster care in the United States to see if it will be a better fit for the larger overall assignment. I have already completed a dive into the history of foster care services in the united states which lends itself to this article. This Wikipedia page is robust with many different sources and sub-headings that contain thorough content.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Lead section
The lead section does not provide an overview or descriptions of the following sections of the article.

Content, organization, and quality of writing
The content of the article seems relevant, but brief. The "Alternate names" section comes at the end, but could possibly be included in the opening section?

The opening of the "General application and techniques.." section under safety is a weak sentence that could be reworked.

The "Resilience and strength building" sub-sub-section is composed of only one sentence.

The "Specific applications and techniques" section does not list any of the foster care treatment techniques that I have been researching and only mentions that it can and has been used in regards to "child advocacy. "

The "Prevalence of trauma" section is also only one sentence that is worded poorly, not supported by a source, and makes a claim that I do not believe it true. It asserts that "negative and ongoing experience is less common."

There is no mention of the demographic makeup of who is most impacted by trauma or violence or the demographics that normally will receive TVIC.

Images and media
There are no images for this page.

References and sources
There are only seven sources listed for the entire article which does not seem comprehensive enough. Five out of the seven sources are books. Only one source is a peer-reviewed review article. The final source is a YouTube video. There is definitely more information out there about trauma- and violence-informed care that could be used in this article.

Talk page
Nothing is posted on the talk page and when viewing the history of the page there is only one contributor. The page was recently created Nov. 14th of this year.

Overall impression
The article is under-developed at the moment and some sections need to be reworked with more sources added.

Lead section
The section is focusing mainly on outlining who oversees and monitors foster care in the United States as well as the various paths children in the foster care system may take (foster parents, residential care, or adoption). It does not touch upon or outline what the following sections of the article are.

Content
In the "History" section there is mention of Charles Loring Brace, but it does not mention the organization he started directly until they mention his sons taking it over. It may help the flow if it was mentioned earlier that the Children's Aid Society was what he was operating through to enact the Orphan Train Movement. It also does not go into who looked after children before foster care. There is a sentence it appears that does not have a citation after a quote: "...Concurrent Planning." This section does not bring in the racialized component of the orphan train.

The "Statistics" section of the article features statistics from 2016 on the number of children in foster care. This could probably be updated to a more current year. There is also mention that the Indigenous community is overrepresented in foster care, but there is no mention about the black community that makes up the majority of foster care children.

In the "California" sub-section it states that children are "placed into the the foster care system for a variety of reasons," it may be worth while to outline legal justifications as to why children are removed from their homes and placed into foster care. This section also goes into the negative repercussions of foster care on the children, but does not address the issue of high rates of children placed in juvenile detention centers. It also does not address the pipeline to incarceration. The second paragraph of this section says that children age out at 18 when the age has been raised to 21. It might also be worth while to mention that in California the majority of children placed in foster care are African American and Latino.

The "Texas" sub-section is lacking, but I will not add to this.

The "Funding and system incentives" section does not address the fact that man foster care agencies are NGOs and receive community and external donations on top of government funding.

The article mainly focuses on legislative acts and appeals that occur within the foster care system and cases brought to court that highlight shortcomings of the system in place. It does not go into depth about the foster care treatment systems used in the United States or the problems associated with them. This may be because this it discussed on the Foster Care page instead but I will have to look into this to make sure.

Images and Media
The pie graph featuring the length of time spent in foster care is dated to 2010. There might by more current graphic information.

References and Sources
Some of the sources used are a little dated, especially those in the statistics section. Otherwise, there are a wide variety of reviewed, credible sources.

Talk page
The talk page is utilized but not very extensive or active. The last update was in May of 2022. Most recent posts have been to update the page on recent legislation and make sure the links work. For the most part on recent posts there are not any replies posted.

Overall impressions
The article is fairly detailed, especially regarding legislation. There is room for improvement when it comes to addressing the disproportionate demographics represented in the foster care system in the United States. It also does not address the correlation between foster care and incarceration. Some statistics could also be updated.