Foster Care Ethics

Raising children is one of the most important responsibilities in any society. Today, working parents have many options, but what about those children who have neither a mother nor father? What about those children who come from broken and abusive homes? In such cases there are often few choices. Parentless children may be placed in orphanages or in foster homes. Ideally, foster care offers children more personalized attention than would normally be available at a public or private situation. However, orphanage care is notoriously uneven. While some children are indeed in loving homes, others find themselves neglected or

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

As many as 75 percent of foster kids are abused while in the foster care system. (Promise2Kids) Foster children, taken from inattentive relatives and put in custody of the state, suffer once again in foster care system that was supposed to keep them safe. While being abused by their foster parents, many children are too afraid to tell anyone. Without any trusted adults to speak out for them or listen, they are forced to bear abuse for over periods of time.

When an adolescent comes into for therapy there is really never an easy task of finding out what is going on. Adolescent that come in who are part of the foster care system will add another degree of challenges. Children and adolescents that are put into the foster care system are not there because they choose to be, they are there due to some event in their life putting them there.

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).

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.

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 U.S foster care system is corrupt and the children trapped in it face the worst of it. The goal of foster care is to eventually reunite children with their parents or find the child a safe, loving home. Instead, foster kids face the harsh reality of abuse, mental illness, and temporary homes. The children and ripped from the homes they’ve known their entire lives because their parents struggle financially. The system would rather pay strangers to the child to take care of him/her rather than helping the parents of the child. This case would be called “neglect” when in reality most parents were doing all they could to take care of their children. The children’s new foster parents are paid hundreds of dollars per month. Often times, the money doesn’t go to the child and he/she is left truly neglected. The system is broken because children are taken from their homes for the wrong reasons and put into unsafe environments that will have a traumatic effect on the rest of their lives.

Providing a child with an outstanding support system is a vital key in creating an environment in which he or she can learn how to grow as a child, and as a human being. Here at American Airlines we strive to provide children with the absolute highest of quality in foster care. We are pleased to create a proposal that, we believe, will help the Dallas foster care system improve on some of their current issues. The proposal aims to not only construct and provide local events to raise awareness about these issues, but to also host fundraisers geared towards improving the living conditions of foster children. One of these issues is the overcrowding of current foster homes in the Dallas metroplex area.

While looking at the dangers and environment in a child’s home, advocates such as employees of the Department of Family and Protective Services of the State of Texas, have the moral obligation to take into consideration safety of children shelters and foster homes. Morally, advocates for the children should also take into consideration the psychological trauma that the child may or may not experience through being taken away from family and being placed, possibly multiple times, at new places away from everything they know.

The goal of foster care is reunification, which is the overall goal of having children placed in foster care for a brief period until the legal guardian is able to gain back custody of the child. The goal of the agency is to identify the gaps when reuniting children back with family members, and stating resolutions to the problem areas. According to Wulcyzn 2004, “Although many children who are reunified exit the system within a relatively short period of time, reunification often do not succeed” (Wulcyzn,24,p.95).The gap has been present in research over the years, and has caused more complication for children to be reunited with family members. To reunite foster kids with guardians according to Child Welfare Information Gateway (2011), “Meaningful family engagement, assessment, case planning, and service delivery are key” (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2011, p.7).

As family structure changes children pay the biggest price. They may lose the luxury of a stable home or school to call their own, when parent are no longer in the picture either. This is an issue that is largely ignored by society and most importantly the government. Without the foster system, children would be left abandoned and forgotten by all. The foster system provides thousands of homes for foster children each year, with parents that can give them what they need. But, foster care in America is inadequate for all American foster children and needs to be improved. Improvements are critical in bettering American foster systems, these improvements include, creating programs, finding more stable homes, and starting mentoring programs

The numbers of children in foster care continue to increase annually with minimal attempts to intercept the causes of the escalation. Children are generally placed into foster care as a result of parental abuse or neglect; however, there are many racial inconsistencies circulating general foster care involvement. In the year of 2014, the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System reported a total of 415,129 children in the foster care system. Depending on their situation, children in the system are in need of some sort of home, whether that be temporary or permanent. When experiencing this type of shift in their lives, many children tend to act out. Foster care in the United States is a

When placing a child with a foster family, the key ethical issues that are most likely to arise with placing a foster child with a foster parent are informed consent. Everyone who participates in the evaluation should do so willingly. In general, people participating in any research project, including an evaluation, have the right to choose whether or not to participate without any penalties. As the team will be examining records and collecting information, it is imperative that everyone participating is aware of what is needed and willingly chooses to participate.

There are several theories created by many thinkers of our time that believes that societal, financial, and social arrangements and/or structures as the main cause of criminal behavior. In society, depending on where you are, there are usually some unwritten norms that are expected to be followed. It can be in a business corporation, out in the streets, at home. Usually there will be two sets of norms that is expected to be followed that causes an individual to feel torn. However, the feeling of being torn is the inner battle of doing the right thing, conscience or keeping yourself alive.