Pros And Cons Of Foster Care

Imagine you are nine years old, with parents who do not love or care about you, and you spend your time being shipped from family to family, in hopes that one of them will love you enough to keep you. This is the life of the average foster kid. There are about 400,000 foster kids in America, and all of them want to have someone love them enough to keep them (Facts about Foster Care). Many foster kids come from dangerous situations, such as abusive parents and every single one of them, whether they will admit it or not, wants to be loved. The foster care system does not love them. The foster care system is a last resort for many children coming from bad situations looking for love, and the system rarely helps to fulfill their need for love or
security.
The foster care system has been around for a long time and has seen many small changes, but the idea began with a movement called the Orphan Train Movement (The Children’s Aid Society). Charles Loring came up with the idea to send city orphans into the country to work on farms and be taken care of by the ranchers’ families. Kids were rescued from the streets, alleys, and shelters throughout the cities and sent to ranches. Over 120,000 children were moved and many of their lives improved. This movement led to reforms including new child labor laws, adoption, and foster care services. Charles Loring was highly influential in dealing with child welfare and in 1853 founded the Children’s Aid Society. In the early 1990s, The Children’s Aid Society introduced a new approach which became the basis for the Federal Adoption and Safe Families’ Act of 1997. It was based on the same idea of taking kids out of bad situations and sending them to families that were better suited to take care of them. This was the basis for our current foster system and through the years the foster system has remained true to these core traits.
The foster care system has kept the same core ideas since the beginning and not all of them are bad. The foster care system is used as a last resort for many kids and it removes them from bad situations: 18.8% of foster kids are rescued from physical abuse, 7.9% are rescued from emotional abuse, 6.2% from sexual abuse, and 3.2% from neglect (Foster Care Statistics). 40- 80% of foster kids are removed from families in which a parent or parents abused a substance such as alcohol or drugs (Allen). Also, foster kids can be discharged from the system because of reunification, adoption, or the finding of a legal guardian. Clearly, the foster system serves many by improving their circumstances, but not everyone has such a positive outcome.
As with every idea, there is always a flip side and unfortunately for the foster system it is a very dark flip side.
There are over 400,000 kids in the foster care system and with this many people in foster care it is easy for individuals to get lost. Josh, a former foster kid, once said, “A typical birthday was one of the saddest times in foster care, at times someone would say ‘Happy Birthday, Josh,’ but usually the day was silent. I would feel worthless, like no one valued my life” (Time for a Reform). Many foster kids don 't feel appreciated or valued because people don 't even care about them enough to find out the most basic things about them like their birthdays. Saving kids from bad situations is very good thing, but only if the system places them somewhere that they can heal from their past experiences. Many foster kids get rescued from bad circumstances like abuse only to be placed with foster parents who are also abusive. The system bounces foster kids around from house to house until they “age out”, and unfortunately the system has a poor success rate for them. Less than half of them go on to live happy lives. On average, 56% of foster kids end up unemployed once they age out, 27% of emancipated foster boys end up in prison, and 30% of emancipated foster girls end up with early pregnancy (The Twenty Five Project). A foster kid’s time in the system affects them for the rest of their lives. A child’s character and personality truly develops in their childhood and teen years; so, if your childhood and teen years are terrible, it will affect you for the rest of your life. Kids are forever changed by the system and it is very unlikely for them to ever reach their full
potential.
As a last resort, the foster system has many flaws and does not always fulfill children’s basic needs like love or security. Many children go into the foster system scared and alone but, they come out hardened and hurt. These kids don’t ask for much, but they do ask for love, and that is something the system never gives them. They want what they see others have: a loving family who cares about them and wishes the best for them. Foster kids all want love, something most people have in abundance. Why can we not come up with a better way to help these sweet kids and love them at the same time?
Works Cited
1.Allen, Mary Lee, Bissel, Mary. “Safety and Stability for Foster Children: The Policy Context.” Future of Children 1(2004): 48. eLibrary. Web. 04 Feb. 2014.
2.The Children’s Aid Society. Foster Care History & Accomplishments. CAS, Web. 4 Feb. 2014.
3.Facts about Foster Care. Children’s rights, 2011.Web. 4 Feb. 2014.
4.“Foster Care.” Issues & Controversies on File. Issues & Controversies. Facts on File News Services, 6 July 2009. Web. 4 Feb 2014.
5.Foster Care Statistics. Children Uniting Nations, 2014. Web. 4 Feb. 2014.
6.Time for Reform: Too Many Birthdays in Foster Care. Kids are waiting. 2007. Pdf. 4 Feb. 2014.
7.The Twenty Five Project. Orphan Crisis. 2014. Web. 5 Feb. 2014.