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Placement Breakdown In Foster Care

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Due to the increasing rate of children being placed into foster care, and the lack of support to meet every youth’s need, America’s foster systems fail to achieve stable placement. When placement plans do not last as long as planned, placement moves are organized and it is called Placement Breakdown. It is common for teenage youth in the foster system to go through placement breakdowns. According to the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), previous difficulties that may affect the level of a youth’s emotional disturbance and motivation to stay in placement contributes to breakdowns. The lack of motivation can stem from “over optimistic expectations”, and absence of support system (SCIE). At a young age, constantly being let down, on …show more content…

Being uprooted and moved from location to location, you are forced to embrace new people, places, families, and schools. In an interview published by adopt us kids, featured teen Franceska discussed how “hard” it is adapting to all the miscellaneous changes she had to go through living in the foster system. In a year she had been to “4 different schools”, and it was hard to make friends because she “leaves so much” (Adopt Us Kids). Youth placed in the system who feel the same way, may lose interest in making social connections fearing they will be temporary. When it comes to being active in school, Anne-Marie Conn PH.D & her colleagues researched, that youth in the foster care system “participate less in structured extracurricular activities” compared to their peers who are not in care (Hazan). The motivation of security, happiness, and a support system can urge youth in foster care to prosper academically and socially. In a podcast by ERLC, Dr. Sharon Ford declares that youth in foster care know 2 things in life, “wait and change”. They “wait” for the known to happen, to meet the “social worker”, to see “the judge”, to “re enter school” and to “relocate”. However she shares that they know “change”, in “life”, in “school, “in neighborhoods” and “in hope”. Being that Dr. Ford lived in foster care, her words of wisdom show …show more content…

social workers are the middle [wo]men between families, social service agencies and schools; working to reunify kids with their families or working to keep kids with their families. By providing advocacy to biological families and foster families, social workers exercise their power of judgement in deciding if the home is a good placement for said child. In a video uploaded by Public Children Service Association of Ohio (PCSAO), the lives of 3 social workers from Ohio and their work experience are documented. Karla Lindsey describes her typical day as “chaotic, and unpredictable” dealing with daily new reports of abuse and neglect (PCSAO). These social workers are mandated to investigate these cases right away, ignorant to the circumstances they come into contact with. The bravery and passion for assuring the safety of foster children is admirable, but it pins a lot of stress onto the employees. Although the state and national recommendation of cases is a maximum of 13 cases per worker, Surveys of social workers showed that 16% of social workers have more than 40 cases on go. Few have reported caseloads between 70-80 (Smith). With the amount of overloaded cases, the ability to provide each case with the same amount of attention and support will become impractical. social workers experience parts of the harsh realities that youth in foster go through during visitations, and sitting through

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