Taking a Look at Foster Care

Foster youth are become more independent and usually leave the parental home at age 23. In the article Mental Health Care of Families Affected by the Child Welfare System by Manny J. Gonzalez; it states, “Given that young children under age 5 are more likely to be placed in out-of-home placements and to spend a significant portion of their lives in foster care, their unique mental health needs are highlighted.” Children placed in foster care systems may end up getting a mental health condition so if a family tries to

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.

or residential treatment centers.” Foster care is intended as a short-term service that helps during emergencies in the lives of families, and the government expects that children who go into the system will be returned to their parents as quickly as possible, or will be given a safe haven,

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

Residence for children who have been a victim to abuse, neglect or other matters in their family that put them in harms way. This is what the foster care system was designed for. It keeps these children safe and provides a temporary home until the parents get their life together and prove themselves or they do not, and the children get adopted by loving families.

Donella H. Meadows defines a system as a “set of elements or parts that is coherently organized and interconnected in a pattern or structure that produces a characteristic set of behaviors” (Meadows, 2014, p. 188). The federal definition of foster care is a “24-hour substitute care for children placed away from their parents or guardians and for whom the State agency has placement and care responsibility” (Johnson, 2004). Therapeutic foster care is a subsystem of the suprasystem which is foster care. The Quality Foster Care Services Act defines therapeutic foster care as foster care which is highly effective in placing children with serious medical, psychological, emotional, and social needs into a home in which foster parents are specially trained to address the needs and challenges of the children (U.S. Senators Baldwin and Portman Lead Effort to Improve Foster Care Services for America’s Most Vulnerable Youth, 2014).

When a child is endangered in one’s own home, child protective services interfere to ensure the safety of the child. In some cases, when conditions at home are unfit regarding the safety of a child, foster placement occurs. Over a half million children within the United States reside in foster care. Out of these children, approximately 20,000 of them continue through their lives within the foster care system until the age of 18. This is referred to “aging out”. Once a child within the foster care system turns 18, they are no longer cared for by state or government agencies and must provide for themselves. For those who do age out of the foster care system, it is often that they find themselves lacking the necessary skills needed to make it on their own, which is often due to the lack of having a stable support system such as a family.

Today, in America, a child enters foster care every two minutes (“Statistics on Foster Care”). Thousands of children enter and exit the foster care system each year with some being adopted, some returning to their homes, and others being emancipated and set to be on their own (Statistics on Foster Care”). The foster care system was first put in place to take children out of overcrowded and underfunded orphanages. It was later transformed to help children from abusive, deceased or negligent families be put into a safer, non-permanent home (“Statistics on Foster Care”). With the thousands of kids put into foster care each year, many are sent to loving homes, however, some children are sent to neglectful and abusive homes that can be equal to or worse than their original living conditions. The current foster care system in place in the United States provides insufficient and unsafe care as well as causing short and long-term negative effects on the children placed in their care.

Foster care provides care for children who have for some reason not able to get it via usual means, this could be because of different types of circumstances. I came to know about this system when I watched hollywood movies.

Foster Care can be a confusing place and scary to some. It is unfortunate when situations must put a child through the system, sometimes due to families’ inability to care for them or other times due to abuse or neglect. Many have experienced some form of loss and trauma and so the process from beginning to end must be handle with care and compassion. When foster placement is called for it is both physically and mentally stressful for all parties involved, most especially to the child. All measures must be taken to ensure that their health, safety, and welfare are top priority when a placing them with foster families who can give them stability and love.

The foster care system is a provisional arrangements in which an assigned caretaker/s; foster parent/s, are assigned to take care of a child/children momentarily. The children are placed in the home because the birth parents are unable to care for them at the moment.

The foster care system, is a temporary arrangement in which adults provide for the care of a child or children whose birthparent is unable to care for them. This can be for a variety of reasons, they can be addicted to drugs, homeless with no means of support or they have passed away and there is no other family member to take the child or children. No matter the reason, the children are placed into a home for their protection. However, some of the children aren’t always placed into a safe home. The amount of abuse that happens to children in foster care is staggering, ranging from neglect, physical, sexual and even emotional abuse. All of the reasons the children could have been taken from their homes to begin with. So then if they were put in to foster care for their protection, whose really protecting them?

Imagine growing up without a family, moving constantly and never having a permanent home. Envision being taken away from an abusive parent and left to survive in foster care for an undefined period of time. Think about lingering within the system for years and suddenly loosing any kind of aid at the age of eighteen. This is a reality for thousands of children in America’s foster care system. There are kids that are searching for a home and family -- and many of them never get one. These youths are all hoping and wishing for a permanent place to go back to. The number of children aging out of the foster care system annually is a serious problem because many children leave foster care without support and suffer consequences in their adult life that could have been avoided if they had been adopted.

Foster care is supposed to help children by removing them from a harmful environment, but it does have its disadvantages. Foster care takes a toll on children to the point where therapy is provided in an effort to diminish problematic

The foster care system and the Child protective services (CPS) main goal is to maintain and provide children with a safe environment/home, when they are at risk or in danger. The main reasons children enter the system are because they are being abused, neglected, parents have abandoned them, have an illness, have died, or are struggling with addiction. As of September of 2015, there was an estimate of 427,910 children in foster care, 45 percent were placed in the homes of non relatives. About two thirds of children in the system have siblings and most are separated, about 31 percent of former foster youth will spend time couch-surfing and homeless. Their are far more children entering the system than people opening up their doors and becoming foster parents. There are also more and more cases of child abuse within the foster homes being reported and discovered. While the intentions of the system is to better the lives of the children the system itself is against them, the separation of siblings, being sent to multiple homes, and aging out are a few problems that the foster care system have control over and can change. It’s clear that the they aren’t meeting their goals, but what happens in the lives of these children that are the victims in the situation is a social issue that society as a whole should be a part of.