The Foster Child Analysis

Many children are suffering due to various complications in their life. Children of all ages end up in the foster care system year after year. Their hardships influence them to feel really depressed and stoic. Many people do not read autobiographies, but the book, Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes-Courter teaches people about the complications of a first-hand foster child, how the foster care system is, and book reviews of famous authors and well-known magazines, as well. The story gives hope to people who believe there is no way out anymore, and it influences upon the world’s culture greatly.

There can be cultural, ethical, and legal concerns associated with this theory are somewhat intertwined. The possible assumption that if a child is born poor, of ethnic minority, raised in a violent setting, and neglected by parents – foster care placement may lead to disruption within the child’s chronosystem. This can lead to attachment issues related to trauma, increased fight or flight reactions that may lead to legal issues, academic challenges, and poor social skills. There is a possible ripple effect from life events and socioeconomic status that could lead to changes with behavior in association with the child’s environment. Understanding this theory can help with application in a school setting

The number of children in the foster care system continues to increase. While the foster care system is essential in helping abused, abandoned, and neglected children, many children remain in foster care for long periods of time when family reunification or adoption is planned. Court delays can often extend the time between when children enter the foster care system and when they are placed into permanent homes. Significant differences exist in the quality of care and outcomes for children depending on their race and ethnicity. The percentage of children of color in the foster care system is larger than the percentage of children of color among the general U.S. population. However, the occurrence of child abuse and neglect is at about the same rate in all racial/ethnic groups.

The author, Nina Biehal, tells of the treatment in foster care and the need for correction in her article, "Maltreatment in Foster Care: A review of the evidence." The author gives many facts about how the government needs to change the level of care provided for the children. This article is more of a constant reminder of how much still needs to change and the level of care offered to children of abuse today. Unlike the article by authors Kristen Turney and Christopher Wilderman, which bases their article on the number of children in foster care receiving mental health care, Biehal gives evidence to support the problems that result from being in foster care. My essay can use this article to paint a picture of the number of children in detrimental conditions and how foster care developed problems with their system to support my argument.

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.

No two children in foster care have the same background. The youths can vary by the age when placed into care, the number of times they were put into care, the quality of the home and family they lived with, and the youths own emotional outlooks (Zlotnick 539). They can develop abandonment issues due to being separated from their biological parents, and stunted emotional growth due to the trauma that foster care puts on a young child. Children need to be raised in a stable and safe environment, and while plenty of foster care parents are loving and nurturing to the child, they may still be affected by being raised by multiple families in a negative way. Every year, over 1 million children experience maltreatment, and about half of these children enter foster care (Greeson et al. 92). Those who enter foster care have usually encountered multiple traumatic events, from either their parents or another caregiver in their lives.

More than two-hundred and fifty thousand children enter the foster care system each year, making it extremely difficult to find the right caregiver for each child. There are so may effects on the child that last their entire lifetime, making it difficult for them to trust others. Not being able to trust their peers, they often find it hard to make friends and long-term relationships last. Fortunately, there are many results that can improve everyone’s position in placing the child. Foster care agencies repeatedly create destructive situations due to the selected caregiver, as well as the plethora of glitches that are created. Due to the unacceptable and inappropriate selection of foster parents, the child frequently experiences difficulties and disadvantages later on. Most children are placed into foster care because of mistreatment and experience the same treatment in their foster homes. Unfortunately, a lot of times the foster parent will take their anger out on their foster child, making a wide array of short-term and long-term complications for the child.

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

Everywhere across the world, more and more children are being placed into foster care or a welfare type system. Foster care can benefit children or harm them; the effects of foster care differ for every individual. These types of systems often have a major effect on young children’s physiological state. Children entering in foster care are often malnourished and have untreated health problems. A high percentage of children who are placed in these types of systems have mental health, physical health, and/or developmental issue which often originates while the individuals are still in the custody of the biological parents. Children in foster care should be provided with a healthy and nurturing environment which often provides positive long term results. The age of children in a foster care varies across the world, but it is often seen that majority of these children are young (George para. 1). There are more young children in the system because younger children require more adequate care than older children that are already in the system. Placing these children in welfare systems is supposed to be a healing process for them. Although this is supposed to be a healing process, statistics say these children have a negative experience while being in these systems, but this is not always the case. A number of children in foster care fall sucker to continuous neglect and recurrent abuse with the lack of nurturing and an unstable environment. These same children often have unmet

In this article, the author shows that the longer children are staying in foster care, the chances of them moving back to something permanent living is very small. He explains that the age of the child really puts a toll on when they will be leaving. Once they reach the legal age, they age out and are to find a permanent place to stay. The chances of this not happening is very slim, considering over 70% of twelve-year-olds deal with this situation. The article explains how the experience living in the foster care causes children to forget past events. Children that have been through rough times only believe they have lived only in foster care. Those children who have not dealt with a serious household problem tend to know where they used to

One way Maurice William’s faces problems in the foster homes is to have a meeting with every foster parent under their program every three months. In this meeting, all issues are discussed in great length and an appropriate procedure to deal with each specific problem are agreed upon and implemented so that the problems do not come up

Too frequently play therapy becomes overlooked and rejected due to the joyous word play. Despite the beliefs, play therapy can inhibit communication barriers, and provide a safe environment for the child to explore critical elements in their life. The book Dibs in Search of Self by Virginia M. Axline provides an excellent example of how effective play therapy can be. Time and time again I found myself becoming moved and flabbergasted by the way play therapy worked for Dibs. Furthermore, the way play therapy assembled a healthy and positive relationship with his family in general.

Play therapy is defined as when a counsellor sees and makes use of toys as an essential and prominent way for children to communicate with other children (Vernon, p.123). Also, as Vernon quoted Thompson and Henderson (2006), play is essentially a mode of communication that young children use to exchange communication and solve issues (Vernon, p. 123).

It is well know that foster Children have a very hard time finding a permanent home and adjusting to their new home. The majority of foster children go through this process of finding a home at a very young age. For most of these children it occurs during very young age which is the most important time for develop mental processes. Therefore foster children are at risk of cognitive and social- emotional development delays. (Jacobson et. al 2013). As mentioned in the article “research has underscored the importance of early, nurturing caregiver environments on brain development, and the importance of positive brain-environment interaction during the first 2 years of life has also been documented by research on foster care and adoption”(Jacobson et. al 2013). The article currently looks at, specifically the issue of foster children’s cognitive development and social- emotional functioning specifically of children ages between 2 to 3 years of age. There has been previous research done on this article. A research done to look at this issue was one done in Romanian were 136 institutionalized children were randomly selected. These children were selected to continue to be institutionalized or placed in foster care. In this study, the foster parents were selected and trained,

"Play in therapy is the child 's mode of communication, for sharing his world, his inner thoughts and feelings, and the meanings that he makes of his experience of his world"(Cochran, Nordling, & Cochran, 2010, p. 4). Play therapy is all about the child. The counselor working with these children in play therapy have to understand how important it is to do their best to keep these sessions as child-centered as possible. This is the child 's opportunity to explore themselves and have the freedom to do so. This environment lets the children feel empowered. In play therapy, it is important they feel self-determined and have control. They also need to express their self-expression through play. Through this, they can express any emotion. Children do not always get the freedom to express themselves freely and this is the one place where they are allowed to do so. Many children from all different backgrounds attend play therapy. There are so many situations that children tend to go through and experience which leads them to going to therapy. One of these situations would be trauma.