As a result, foster children tend to be over- or underimmunized. They suffer disproportionately from chronic diseases, neglect, abuse and especially in L.A. County problems stemming from their parents prenatal drug use, said Janet Schneiderman, MN, PHN, RN, assistant professor of clinical nursing at the USC Department of Nursing. Working closely with the child s social worker or probation officer, the public health nurse will ensure that he or she receives proper medical care, even if this means only reviewing or updating a medical record and making a referral. The extra staff also should allow for more home visits, she added a much-needed improvement. Before, because of the large caseloads, nurses simply couldn t go to see the child in his or her own home environment.
Nurses also form a critical link between the child and the medical provider.
Nurses often can navigate through the health care bureaucracy better than a social worker, because they can discuss medical issues in medical language, a plus when dealing with doctors, she said. About 48,000 children in the foster care system qualify for the Health Care Program for Children in Foster Care, and 1,686, or 3.4 percent, of these children are in the care of the Probation Department, according to CHDP figures. Nursing students are not being given the opportunity to deal with this. We need to prepare our students to work with foster kids. Nursing education today stresses acute care, dealing with immediate needs.