Essay about Foster Care

From existing research it is proven that children have mental, physical and development issues from growing up in foster homes. These young adolescents and children do not have the proper care in fostering homes as they would in an "all average American home". These kids are open to new traumatizing experiences not usually seen if one had a stable home, and these events causes permanent damage to one 's health state. Also with the simple fact that there are hundreds of children per foster home, all with different needs, still needing the basic necessities to thrive as a human without getting the proper funding calls for malnutrition children. Now these young kids are not just getting the proper care needed but they are also doing poorly in school and with daily challenges in life generally.

The life for a child in foster care is much different than any other child’s. While growing up children look up to their father or mother. They aspire to be like them and follow in their footsteps. For the children placed in foster care all they see is that their parents could not take care of them. They will not have the memoires of growing up with their family, but instead memories of the different homes they have been transferred too. Foster parents love and care for all of the children that come into their homes, but it’s hard for the children to accept someone who moves in and out of their lives.

for most of the child welfare system’s history, most states did little to prepare the children in their custody for life in the real world. The federal government offered no financial help to the states to assist emancipating youth until 1986, when for the first time, Congress passed a law authorizing limited “independent living” efforts. Over the next fifteen years, about two-thirds of older youth in foster care received some sort of assistance in building independent living skills, ranging from a thirty minute course on resume writing to an eight-week course in household management. The 1986 law was seriously flawed because it only paid for skill-building services to youth between the ages of sixteen and

Foster Care Independence Act of 1999 Before this bill was signed into law the Federal Government provided about $70 million per year to conduct programs for adolescents leaving foster care that are designed to help them establish independent living. Research and numerous reports from States conducting these programs indicate that adolescents leaving foster care do not fare well. As compared with other adolescents and young adults their age, they are more likely to quit school, to be unemployed, to be on welfare, to have mental health problems, to be parents outside marriage, to be arrested, to be homeless, and to be the victims of violence and other crimes (Cook, 1991). The need for special help for youths ages 18 to 21

Though I never entered foster care as a child and therefore, did not consider this topic directly related to my childhood; I see things differently now. The largest common denominator for the existence of foster care and the primary reason why children get placed is extreme poverty. Although I have gone hungry myself here and there in my life, and I also have encountered financial hardship throughout, it appears as really nothing compares to the histories of these families. The traumas they have endured living through despair and darkness of these circumstances is not easy to put into words. My research took me to different genders, different cultures, and different extremes of personal history. It was really heartbreaking to find out these facts via individual memoirs because it felt like they all sat in the middle of my room, up close and personal. What I do know now without a doubt is that I can clearly relate to the raw emotions which back up any human trauma out there. Any of these emotions are what connects humans all over the world; it gives people the key to relating to one another, especially in the space of suffering, as it will demonstrate through the call for and usage of foster care.

In the past few decades there has be an increasing amount of children placed in the foster care system. With the amount of rising teen pregnancies and maternal drug abuse means increasing numbers of infants abandoned at birth. There have been many cases of child abuse or neglect that have been on the rise. State and local agencies are unable to suitably supervise foster homes or arrange adoptions. Statistics show that many children will spend most of their childhood and teenage years in the foster care system, which has shown to leave emotional scars on the child. Today, Child Welfare groups are looking for federal funding and legislation to increase programs and services aimed at keeping families together.

Children suffer significantly until someone decides to protect them. The government allocates funds to establish the foster care system and that system advances to enforce rights for children. When the right to remove children from an abusive situation first originated, the foster care system established a separation procedure for children from their abusive homes. This act of removing children from their families brought about psychological issues and trauma. Throughout earlier years, the foster care system adjusted their program according to the rules and regulations established to provide for the needs of children. However, problems keep appearing elsewhere. These children endure the brunt of every new philosophy in behavioral health management. Often, the biological parents will be left out of the solution. The foster care system develops services to train foster families in caring for foster children and behavioral issues. For some reason, the foster care system believes improvement simpler to reform the children and makes a trivial attempt of the reformation with family. The foster care system needs to try to achieve bonds within the biological family instead of the sole reliability on removal of children to be an adequate answer. The foster care system’s obligation should be to develop a training system for the rehabilitation of families and offer support to achieve the greatest outcome in child rearing. Foster care needs to adapt to supporting families emotionally,

Foster care is defined as the system in which a child under 18 years old is placed in a group home, institution, or private home through a governmental or social service agency. Foster care in the United States began in 1853 (NFPA). Charles Loring Brace began the system as a way for homeless immigrant children living on the streets of New York City to have a home (NFPA). Eventually in the early 1900’s more formal inspections and placements were made and it soon became similar to what it is today (NFPA).

Every year in the United States, hundreds of children and adolescents are taken from their parents and primary caregivers and placed in out-of-home care situations due to issues in their homes and family lives which contribute to unsafe living conditions. These children and adolescents often face many health, behavioral, developmental, and psychological issues.

The foster care system in America is incredibly corrupt. There is no denying that. America has had issues with foster care since it began about 160 years ago. It first began completely privatized, and as the federacy found ways to fund it, it gradually became entirely public. Yet, there has consistently been problems with its operations. There have been multiple attempts in the government to mend the problem, or at least help. A lot of these “solutions” have been disasters because the foster care system is not continuously overseen and regulated. Children are abused both physically and mentally, and will often age out more damaged than when they first entered the system. There is one particular solution that has come to the surface: privatizing the system again. However, this has never really brought any light to the problem, and even makes situations worse. The privatization of foster care is not an ethical solution to the dilemmas of the system because of the increase of abuse, undeniable deaths, and insurmountable corruption.

The foster care system in America negatively affects the lives of adolescents in the system mentally and physically. On any given day there are over 428,000 children in foster care and more than 20,000 kids age out of foster care with no permanent family; therefore, they are being left behind socially, educationally, mentally, and under developed for the real world. Foster care first started in the nineteen hundreds when Charles Loring Brace created the “Children’s Aid Society” in New York. Then later on the 1900’s, social agencies started to supervise and pay the foster children’s sponsors. However, back in foster care’s history and still today, the kids in the system experince abuse and become mentally unstable. One out of five kids

The foster care system is supposed to protect the children from abuse and neglect. Children are being removed from their home away from an abusive situation and placed into the foster care system that need to be reformed to protect the children from more abuse and neglect. When a child is placed into the foster care system, it doesn’t mean they will be free from abuse and neglect they will still have obstacles to overcome. Although these children’s are being removed from the only family they know and familiar being around to being placed in an uncertain environment.

Because of this the outstanding numbers of children aging out of foster care has been rising over the past couple of decades and has grown into a serious issue. These children are becoming homeless, under

Everywhere across the world, more and more children are being placed into foster care or a welfare type system. Foster care can benefit children or harm them; the effects of foster care differ for every individual. These types of systems often have a major effect on young children’s physiological state. Children entering in foster care are often malnourished and have untreated health problems. A high percentage of children who are placed in these types of systems have mental health, physical health, and/or developmental issue which often originates while the individuals are still in the custody of the biological parents. Children in foster care should be provided with a healthy and nurturing environment which often provides positive long term results. The age of children in a foster care varies across the world, but it is often seen that majority of these children are young (George para. 1). There are more young children in the system because younger children require more adequate care than older children that are already in the system. Placing these children in welfare systems is supposed to be a healing process for them. Although this is supposed to be a healing process, statistics say these children have a negative experience while being in these systems, but this is not always the case. A number of children in foster care fall sucker to continuous neglect and recurrent abuse with the lack of nurturing and an unstable environment. These same children often have unmet

The Social Security act benefited many people. Those who fell in this category were workers, victims of industrial accidents, unemployed insurance, aid for dependent mothers and children, the blind, and the handicapped. This Social Security act was later signed into law, by current president at the time, Roosevelt. (Social Welfare History Project, n.d.) Moving along the line in 1970 was when the CWLA helped establish the National Foster Parents Association. In August 1971, this CWLA program received a three-year grant to create an organization based for foster parents. This association was established as an outcome of the concerns of the independent groups. The people felt that the country needed a program to meet the needs of the foster families in the U.S (Family Plus, n.d.). In 1980 the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare became law. The tenacity was to create a program of adoption assistance to ultimately serve different criteria’s. Its purpose was to strengthen the program of foster care assistance for the needy and dependent children, improve child welfare as well as social services and aid to families with dependent children programs (child Welfare Information Gateway, 2012). There are a myriad of different historical information that can lead and relate to the cause of the Child Welfare services. These are all just bits and pieces of importance that historically gives this program