Foster Care: Making A Difference In The World

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

One of my all time favorite musicals as I was growing up was always Annie, about a sweet little orphan who through determination and a little positivity found a better life. But sadly as hard knock as Annie’s life was, it is nothing compared to the actually reality. The early foster system was established in the 1500s in order to care for children who were removed from their parents. Foster care was intended to be a short-term solution until the child is either adopted or reunited with their family. However, because of how few people there are willing to take in these kids, the average child will spend over two years waiting to be adopted. But the flaws in this system run much deeper.

In the United States 21% of all children are living below the federal poverty line. 2.9 million cases of child abuse and neglect are reported every year in the United States. 428,000 children are in the foster care system, and 107,918 foster children are waiting to be adopted. The foster care system is temporary out of home care for neglected, abused and impoverish children under 18. While the foster care system has all positive ideas, they fall short in providing certain needs for these children. Kids not only in America but all over the world that are living in poverty, are abused, neglected, and have an unstable home life. Nobody wants to live a life like that, especially not a child. They don’t know how to support themselves on their own, they need a family and a guardian that will take care of them, support, and love them.

He promised to make a difference for the foster community, so he decided to get his bachelors in social work and intern with the National Council for Adoption. Having experienced the harsh realities himself and knowing the struggle for the children in foster care, he said “the reality of facing life's responsibilities alone is paralyzing; often we are far behind educationally, socially, and emotionally compared to those who grew up in loving families” (Lawson). Most of these children in foster care, ranging from two to fourteen, have to leave home because of neglect and trauma that had happened to them previously. Most of them don’t know what it's like to live with a loving and healthy family like most of American children get to experience everyday. Foster children experience maltreatment at home and in the system that becomes a catalyst for more corruption in their lives.

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.

The foster care system exists in order to enhance the lives of children whose parents were deceased rather than because of abuse today. Our outlook, principles, and ways of being concern for and protecting abused or neglected children and looking after families has shifted greatly throughout history. In this paper I will discuss and inform the readers on the three main components. The first part will discuss the foundation and growth of the foster care system as time pass. Secondly, describe the contemporary state of the system within the United States, including pertinent statistics. Lastly, considering future guidelines intended for the system, including ways in which the system can progress throughout the time.

As of 2016 there were nearly a half million children in the foster care system, with roughly 25,000 “aging-out” each year (Ahmann, 2017). Most adolescents “age out” of the system with no one to mentor or serve as a caring parent figure. Foster youth are in dire need of long-term adult role models to guide them to achieve success. According to Ahmann, 50% of foster youth left “the system” without a high-school degree, as well as with having higher rates of PTSD, and depression (p. 43). Ahmann presented that research has proven teenagers, in general, that have quality relationships from adults able to provide support, do better than those that do not. If research has shown efficacy in supportive adult figures in a teen’s life then one can conclude that foster youth would also benefit. Foster children are at a disadvantage a soon as they enter “the system” so giving them resources proven positive is vital to their future success.

Everyone loved it, it was my first time playing, but because I’m not in foster care I’m suppose to answer all the questions that apply to my life, if I get one that is specifically about foster care I am to pretend that I’m in foster care and think about how I would feel in those situations. The kids really started to open up about their feelings of frustration, loneliness, abandonment, confusion, and many others, these were just a few that were repeated. At 7:30 p.m. the kids left and we put the room back together. During our meeting we found that the siblings were no longer at the same foster home anymore, one of them had to be moved out. This explained a lot of the behavior that was experienced tonight, one of the girls went off in the Volcano room beating Max, the giant stuffed man, with bats, tying him up with ropes, and making a whip for him. This also can explain the little boy’s attitude toward doing the activity. We came to the conclusion that these kids need Healing Hearts more than they know and we can’t give up on them even when the going gets tough, because it will get tough.

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.

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).

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.

Some awful things we hear about the foster care system makes the system seem like it is awful, but in reality the system was created to help the foster youth. Some examples would be that the system does not help after a child has entered into a foster home, but the system pays a monthly supplement to the foster parents to pay for clothes and medical expenses. Despite the common belief that foster care is an awful system, but in actuality there are programs within the the foster care system that help youth and the main goal is to reunite the foster children with their biological parents.

As I read through the final chapters of Beam’s book, I felt both hopeful and disheartened. I feel that the original premise or goal of the child welfare system is to ensure that children have a family. A family that is capable of appropriately caring for a child and providing them with unconditional love. Pat O’ Brien and Chester Jackson’s program, You Gotta Believe! resonates with this goal. There homeless prevention program addresses a principle issue of foster care that the system has not properly addressed, so it seems. According to Pat, an estimated 50 percent of the current homeless population consists of individuals that were once in care. Pat and Jackson saw a need to address the damaging aspects of growing up in care, by implementing

“I had no medical history. I had no shot records. I had nothing.” This was the response given by one of the foster caregiver participant in a qualitative research conducted by Greiner, Ross, Brown, Beal, & Sherman, 2015). Children in the foster care are among the most vulnerable population and have many health issues including chronic medical conditions and developmental delays. In addition, there is a high rate of mental health problems. As Greiner et al., 2015 depicted, children entering foster care lack organized documentation of their health history including immunization records. There are some efforts and policies in place to improve the provision of health to foster care children but they are implemented inadequately and lack coordination.

The study consisted of 12 parents who foster children ages 2-8 years old. The high levels of conduct problems among children in the foster care system and the added cost to families, society and services, there is a pressing need to support foster parents. Providing foster care to children with increased emotional, behavioral, and medical needs requires not only time, but patience in dealing with the child’s demands. Foster parents often voice they are unprepared to meet demand of children with increased behavioral and emotional needs and adolescents in their care. This situation can result in placement disruption, which further strains foster care resources and has negative impacts on foster children and youth. The incidence of conduct disorder