Ellen Foster : An Adult Who Will Never Give Up On Them

Against all odds, Ellen never gives up her belief that there is a place for her in the world, a home that will satisfy all her longing for love, acceptance, and order. Her eventual success in finding that

In todays’ society many Americans never think about our foster care system. Foster care is when a child is temporarily placed with another family. This child may have been abused, neglected, or may be a child who is dependent and can survive on their own but needs a place to stay. Normally the child parents are sick, alcohol or drug abusers, or may even be homeless themselves. We have forgotten about the thousands of children who are without families and living in foster homes. Many do not even know how foster care came about. A few of the earliest documentation of foster care can be found in the Old Testament. The Christian church put children into homes with widowers and then paid them using collection from the church

The purpose of this policy was to provide funding for children aging out of foster care to provide independent living such as housing and job skills. According to Fernandes{ nilausa.org} (2006) “Around 30% of children who left foster care in 2003 were 12 years or younger when they entered care. This suggests that children who are leaving care without being formally reunified with a parent, adopted, or placed in guardianship are a growing concern of child welfare agencies and policymakers. Recently emancipated foster care youth are particularly vulnerable during the transition to adulthood. While many young people have access to financial and emotional support systems throughout their early adult years, former foster youth often lack assistance in developing independent living skills to ease the transition. Studies indicate that youth who have “aged out” of foster care fare poorly relative to their counterparts in the general population on several outcome measures: employment, education, homelessness, mental health, medical insurance coverage,

For many teenagers, their 18th birthday is an exciting time in their lives. They are finally becoming a legal adult, and are free from the rules and restrictions created under their parents. But not all teens feel the same joy about this coming of age. For the hundreds of thousands of children living in foster care in the United States, this new found freedom brings anxiety and fear. Where will they live after turning 18? How will they get the medications they may need? How will they find a job with little to no experience? How will they put themselves through school? Aging out of foster care is a serious issue among America’s youth. Every year, 20,000 children will age out with nowhere to go, being expected to be able to survive on their

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, every year close to 25,000 youth age out of the foster care system and are faced with cold hard realities of adulthood. This does not include the youth who leave the system, which is estimated to be another 30,000. Most adolescents anticipate their eighteenth birthday, as it brings on a new found sense of independence and most importantly a time of celebration. However when foster children reach eighteen, they begin facing the challenges of transitioning to adulthood. These children disproportionately join the ranks of the homeless, incarcerated, and unemployed. These youth are unprepared for the independent life they are forced to take on. The average age that young adults who have never experienced foster care leave their family home for good is 24, and 40% return home again at least once afterwards (Margolin, 2008). With these facts being stated, we yet expect youth who has dealt with rejection after rejection to leave “home” of the state custody permanently and fin for themselves. These youth sometimes have fewer than $250 in cash, only one-third have drivers licenses, and fewer than one-quarter have the basic tools to set up a household, let alone the skills to know what to do with the tools (Krinsky, 2010). Youth exit care with no more than a garbage bag of their belongings, finding themselves alone at the age of eighteen, with little reason to celebrate what is supposed to be an exciting milestone

What qualifies a family as a family is something that has been largely debated in history. In recent years, untraditional families have become more publicized and are seen everyday in both the media and in real life. An example of an untraditional family would be The Fosters from the ABC Family’s TV show The Fosters.

At the age of ten, most children are reliant on their parents for everything in their lives needing a great deal of concentration and concern. However, Ellen, the main character and combatant of the novel Ellen Foster, demonstrates a significant amount of self-reliance and mature, impartial thought as a ten-year-old girl. Ellen is a bantling even though she was not deserted, she was impoverished of a normal childhood. Her life as a child was immensely hard, physically and emotionally. She never had a mother or father take care of her through her entire youth. The recent mortality of her mother sends her on a journey for the optimal family, or anywhere her father, who had shown insensitivity to both she and her frail mother, was not. Kaye Gibbons’

world and people around her, such as ^He was a big wind up doll of a

Foster care is something that 400,000 children in the United States, go through. I have personally been through this myself. To improve foster care for children, I have created a website along with an app. The name of both the website and app is Foster To Success. Foster To Success will especially be useful for foster youth, social workers, potential adopters, foster parents, and any additional people, who work with foster youth. But it can also be useful if you are going through a hard time. The app is free and available on iOS devices at the App Store, and on Andriod devices on GooglePlay. If you would like additional features the cost is ninety nine cents. I believe this will help improve foster care and help make it an easier transition for the children.

Living with family can make life rather complex, especially when dealing with problems, because this group of people are so close to each other emotionally. It’s hard to keep secrets or keep things behind doors because there’s not really a door that can’t be opened by everyone. This is especially true with children and teens going through the ropes of high school. Finding the balance of when a child needs to be disciplined by the parents and when to let the child be more independent with their problem solving or even finding a way to have everyone connect to each other while also providing a comfortable space or bit of a distance from each other can be a hard task for everyone, especially if there are multiple individuals within the family.

Kaye Gibbon’s novel, Ellen Foster, exists as a coming of age story for a young girl named Ellen. Throughout Ellen’s life she experiences several traumatic events. Most of these events included family member’s death. Her mother dies of an overdose from her cancer medication. Ellen’s father drinks himself to death. Also her grandmother dies of an illness.

Ellen, a 34 year old mother was in a traumatic car accident leading her to receive a right leg and left arm amputation. In this situation, there were many people involved. Ellen, who is a mother and wife, now needs assistance from others. Ellen is married to her husband who is currently a carpenter. Her husband is trying to build ramps and other objects to allow his wife to have full access around their house. The husband is also the only one who is currently working, making the family rely on him for their income. The wife is worried about helping her two kids, a six and eight year old. The two kids want their mother out of the hospital and depend on her to drive them to school, cook dinner, brush their hair, and play with them. Without their

The article I chose as my fifth media entry is called “The lessons we can learn from foster parents” by The Washington Post. It is about how foster parents and how biological parents can take the advice from them to parent their children. The lessons that are given within this article are: Perfection is not the goal, Express love-even when disciplining, and learn to let go. All of these will help a biological parent when certain situations come up and parenting their children as a whole.

When I was 14 my family made the decision to become a foster family, it was a life changing decision in more ways than one. Ever since then there has not been less than 6 children living in my house. Yes, it's loud, messy, chaotic and I never get a moment alone, but most of all it has opened my eyes to the real world. Two things have influenced my life from this experience. One, is the stories they tell. Every child that has came through my home has been abused and homeless, among other horrible things. It really made me see that no matter how horrible I believe my life is, I am lucky, I get to live in a home with parents who love me. I it was difficult for me to understand that not everyone gets the privilege of having what I have, until I had to look reality in

It is a sunny summer day as I approach the home of a friend of mine who is a foster parent to four children and the infant I am going to observe has been in my friend’s home since she was less than a week old but does have visitation with her biological father on the weekends. The little girl is now sixteen months old and has seen me numerous times over the past year, in which this has been a great opportunity to see the growth of this child since she was six months old.