In this story, Mattie goes from needing her mother the most, to basically being the mother of others to care for. Mattie gets caught up in her own world like a normal teenager does. Mother returns at last, and she’s not the same anymore. She’s very still and quiet, and that’s not like her. Instead of Mattie being the one that sleeps the day away, it’s mother that is and Mattie knew what was coming. It was time for her to become the responsible adult for her family. The coffeehouse. And especially her mother. Throughout the story. The author shows us that being negative, will only make a difficult journey more…
n the essay, The Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit, Solnit is bombarded with questions regarding her decision to not marry and have children. Instead of her interviewers focusing on her work, the thing she has dedicated her life to, she is instead held down by the stereotypes that plague women today. Many people in today’s society still had the notion that main responsibility for women is to give birth and care for that child. The fact that this notion is still prevalent in society bothers me because it prevents men from realizing that women have passions and desires that they want to accomplish in life outside of this cult of domesticity. An accomplished women will never get the respect she deserves if we give into the notion that…
Content The author’s point of view contributed to my social work education by highlighting the problems in the foster care system. The author provided examples by narrating America’s journey from Ms. Harper’s home to his mothers home then to…
The number of childless adults has increased since the mid 70s due to reasons such as location, expense, women having jobs, and how society portrays parenting. The article “No Kids For Me, Thanks” by Teddy Wayne provides examples of people who agree and disagree with refusing to add to the gene pool and why. Kate Bolick, for instance, says, “If I had kids, I can’t see doing it in New York City. Not just because I couldn’t afford it, but because I don’t like the idea of raising a child in the epicenter of class disparity and extreme wealth.” The media also affects adults’ decisions about having children by creating reality shows or writing articles that depict parenting as a tiring, frustrating task.…
Advocacy has played an important role in helping those individuals who do not have a voice, or who do not know where to turn when going through a difficult time. Advocates push to influence public policy and resource allocation decisions within social systems and institutions. Learning team A was asked to conduct an interview of a social services agency involved with advocacy. The learning team turned to a nonprofit organization named A.W.A.R.E. Inc. This organization was designed to help children and adults with behavioral disorders to reintegrate back into society. Within this agency is a woman who is a supervisor for staff but is also involved with another agency as part of her position within this nonprofit organization.…
Enhancing the Quality of Parental Legal Representation Act of 2013 is a newly proposed policy that is currently being reviewed in the House committee on Ways and Means. This policy is designed to aid in resolving the issue of children being in foster care for longer periods than necessary by providing the parents involved in the child welfare system with proper quality legal representation. As this issue and policy are reviewed it is necessary to analyze the nature of the cause of the problem, what the policy intends to accomplish, the extent that the policy will address the need, the possible unintended effects of the policy, and potential recommendations that could be made with regard to the proposed policy.…
The foster care system in New York City is deeply flawed. Sixty-four percent of foster care children are impoverished in their adult lives, 50% of girls are pregnant within 12-18 months of aging out of the system, and 80% of all inmates on death row grew up in the foster care system. Foster care children should not have to fight against these statistics. The Felix Organization is providing solutions, through Camp Felix, Beyond Camp, the Felix Friendship Circle, and the Secret Santa Gift Exchange. Camp Felix, their largest program, is a four week long summer camp for children in foster care.…
This paper reviews several articles that explore and attempt to explain reasoning and barriers for difficulties regarding foster care children receiving adequate and appropriate health care. Although all similar in context, the articles vary in methods and delivery in addition all of the articles share similar statistics and attempt to maintain recommendations laid out by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Various strategies for fixing the barriers are proposed throughout the readings with the same end goal in mind, to provide better medical care for children in foster care. Key terms used frequently throughout the readings include: placement, referring to a child’s location in foster care, child welfare systems and child protective…
When taking a look at all of the social issues we face in our society, it is child welfare and the foster care system that engrosses me the most. This issue has been near and dear to my heart for a very long time and is the reason I decided to go into social work. Growing up with an Aunt who raised and adopted foster care children allowed me to see a lot of issues that I would not have otherwise seen. One of the first issues is the number of children that are in the foster care system. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that 402,378 children were living in foster care in 2013. Outside of this enormous number the issues that these children face extend a lot deeper. These issues include but are not limited to depression,…
The negative effects of the system on foster children prove how the system fails to improve the lives of the kids it pledges to help and how critical it is that the government make an effort to improve foster agencies. No one would argue against how much kids need responsible adults in their lives. Most children, especially foster children many of whom have suffered abuse and neglect, need someone to keep them responsible and in line until they are old enough to mature and develop their own moral code. Several studies found that foster children are at a higher risk of becoming high school dropouts, homeless, incarcerated, or addicted to drugs. In addition, reports link foster children with having 15% lower standardized test scores and…
The number of children in foster care continues to rise each year, reflecting the flaws and problems within the system. It is a known fact that children who have been abused or neglected often have a range of unique physical and mental health needs (First Focus, 2008). The Massachusetts foster care systems seems to be struggling with the following issues: providing safe homes for the children, reducing the length of stay in foster care by increasing the adoption rates, improving the education system and health care systems for both children in and those transitioning out of foster care and a plan to provide adolescents with better life skills to foster independence after foster…
Every year more that 20,000 children will “age out” of foster care. These youth face extreme obstacles including the expectation that they are now adults and able to self-manage out in the world. Many of us are lucky enough to be raised by supportive parents who we can turn to long after the age of 18 for encouragement, reassurance and direction in our lives. The majority of these children have not finished high school and are unemployed. How can we expect them to go out into the world without the tools they need to succeed? These kids have been dealt a rough hand in life and many times they have no type of family connections or even reliable friends. They end up facing challenges that the majority of youth with families will never know. They have a higher risk of ending up on public assistance, homeless, as young parents or incarcerated.…
The Foster Care systems that are in operation today are very minimally funded and provide a very low success rate of the children that come out of the foster child system in most states. Because of these facts, the media labels this system and not only a last chance scenario but also almost as a punishment for children because they were not adopted or have not been adopted by families yet. The system has many flaws and the media exploits those flaws regularly without any action taken by the government or governing bodies that manage the system. Because of flaws and their exploitation in…
“How would you feel if you spent your entire childhood being shipped from one foster home to another?” Many kids get sent from home to another all the time in foster care some kids will have lived up to 10 different homes before being adopted. Lots of kids get put into foster care to never be adopted and then have no family. My topic is controversial because people have different views on how the foster care system should be ran. Although many people think the foster care program is fine as it is, more control is needed over how foster parents handle things, because 13% of all foster kids run away at least once, Most kids in foster care are victims of some sort of child abuse, and kids wait a long time to be adopted.…
Benjamin Eaton, an alleged murderer, was the first documented example of foster care in the colony of Jamestown. This was the first but certainly not the last unsuccessful case of foster care in the US. The measure of success for foster care can be many things. Society measures success by the number of children who become model citizens; however, the fact that nearly 60 percent are convicted of felonies later in life deems the foster care system in the United States unsuccessful. The perfect world is truly a world without the foster system; however, until we reach this point we have to perfect the current foster system.…