Personal Narrative: Myself In The Foster Care System

I remember being taken away from my mother at age seven. My brother was only a year old when we were separated. We were ripped away from her arms and placed in foster care. I can recall that day clear as a crystal. My throat felt constricted as I yelled out for my mother, my eyes were red and puffy from all the crying, my knees bruised because I refused to be taken away. From then out my life tumbled down. I could no longer protect my brother, I could not be there to wipe my mother’s tears away. I was alone and frightened. Now that I look back at my experiences in foster care it made me stronger. As of today I am more grounded, and able to go through life with a new lense. I got to experience foster care and am able to empathize with those who have gone through it as well.

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

Over 400,000 children were placed into care in the year of 2014, statistics have shown they've also went up. During my experience while being in foster care, i had to leave behind many people I cared about, but i also knew i had a lot of things to learn. I knew i messed up alot, and i knew while i was getting ready for court, there was no more chances. Usually i just got sanctioned for twenty days and up, but my probation officer already told me, she knew it wasn't helping, and more serious things were going to happen. She literally tried everything with me, and nothing was working. She tried gateway, which was a place to go to after school, for supervision at all times, there was reasons for her putting me in their, which was because my dad

Social work introduced itself to me at a very young, and tender age. Growing up in foster care, not being able to see my parents, watching as family members died before I could say goodbye, and constantly being called orphan in school, taught me a great deal about the scars I would carry for the rest of my life. While I tried to play the role of a normal kid, hanging with friends, telling stories of happy childhood memories, it was simply a mask to hide that I knew my scars were burning inside me, that happiness wasn’t a luxury I could enjoy. Going from foster home to foster home was a reminder of that unaffordable luxury, and soon I grew to be so insecure that I could not function without having someone tell me what to do, or reassure me that

As a child I grew up in the foster care system. My formative years consisted of uncertainty and confusion since I was not able to express myself effectively to the state assigned child advocates. During my time in foster care I volunteered to care for the younger children who had special needs. As I began to care for the children especially with neurological brain damage I became intrigued by how little science seemed to know about Special Education or effective treatment. At the age of eleven I started reading peer-reviewed articles such as Neurology journal and Exceptional Children (EC) trying to adsorb everything science related that would provide answers. Several years after I aged out of the system I had a child of my own who was born with severe Autism and sensory integration disorder. My son Andrew was non-verbal for the first four years even after extensive

After a long ride, we saw our new home for the first time. It wasn’t luxurious, but to a couple of young children like us it was cool to live on the beach. The changes that lied ahead of us were great. There are many ways in which this new start changed my life. First, no longer did we live in fear. This enabled me to move on. I enrolled in eight grade that year. I felt like had a fresh start. No one knew my business. I could make myself whatever I wanted. My whole personality changed. That year I started at quarterback for junior high and from there everything started to look up. If I was to go into details of all the success I had it would be bragging, so I am just going to say I went from a casualty of a broken home to a respected and important part of High Island High School. In the five years I was there, I had more fun and a more productive life than all the other years put together.

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

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.

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 cops found me after three days. They decided it wasn’t working for me living at that other house so they moved me to different foster home. I’ve been to three different foster homes in the last month and a half, and now I’m on my fourth. I guarantee you I won’t last long here either. I’m already leaving this place without their permission.

from the state, leading to revision of the state agency policies and regulations and also the initiation of the new program to create extra support for child welfare.

I chose to visit a mental/ behavioral health agency, The Healthy Foundations Center, that works with many individuals who have been dually diagnosed to increase knowledge regarding substance abuse concerns. As a foster care agency, we are well prepared to work with children and families, however we are sometimes less prepared to meet the needs of parents who are also dealing with addiction. Currently, we cannot provide any medication management services, either, which is a service that could be beneficial to the clients we serve. I identified this agency because they have providers who are experienced in working with individuals with dual diagnosis, capable of meeting the complex needs of these families, as well as provide medication

One of the ways foster care is inhibited is that the separation of the child from their parents and placement in a foster home can be traumatic for the child. In some instances where the child is not safe in their home, the first choice may be to remove the child and place them in foster care. Both the parents and child have a hard time accepting the situation. This separation causes conflicts and resistance from the child (Crosson-Tower, 2014, p. 316). Other myriad adjustments, such as lifestyle change, new school, new friends and neighbors, and at times a new culture, also inhibit the effectiveness of foster care placement. Foster care can create an environment of

The first month Olivia spent more time in my arms than any other place. When the familiar weight was absent the world felt astray, and when Olivia couldn’t sense my safety net she would cry. I learned to change diapers and make bottles. I had a reason to get out of bed,

As the end of the night approached us, I couldn’t stop thinking about how many mixed emotions I had about starting a whole new chapter in my life. I couldn't wait to go to college, meet all new people, get a degree so that I could start my career path, but I knew that meant I had to say goodbye to my two best friends, who were moving several hours away from me. This was one of the hardest things I had ever had to do in my life. We all cried a little, and then made promises to keep in touch, and then we were off into the real world! I was very happy to be at this point in my life, but I was scared deep down inside.