The Pros And Cons Of Foster Care

“More than half a million children are in foster care in the United States today—roughly double the number who were in foster care in the mid-1980s, according to the Child Welfare League of America (Nakyanzi).” Kids being placed into foster care are kids who have been abused and neglected by their own loved ones, and instead of helping the kids mend the broken family, they pull them apart by sending the kids to foster home after foster home. Foster care was meant to help and protect kids from abuse and neglect that they were receiving at home; however, there are problems with the foster care system. With these problems foster kids often struggle with learning to be independent and some children even face mental and physical problems. Past studies
Even though the system has an overwhelming number of children they lack the number of foster parents that volunteer. Pennsylvania has about 9,000 homes but 20,000 children in the foster care system; Oklahoma contains only about 4,669 foster homes but have 8,865 children that are in foster care (“Shortage of foster parents”). This difference in numbers is obviously concerning to those in the foster system trying to find places to put the children so that they are away from thoses who were neglecting or abusing them. This lack of foster parents is not only concerning but dangerous towards the children. During one of Illinois tragedies, after they abandoned family preservation, they ran out of places to put the children, “So they were jammed into a hideous shelter, then overflowed into offices.” Another Tragedie that had happened in New york, after they also abandoned family preservation, They had brought in too many children and “thousands of children were forced to sleep, often on chairs and floors, in violence-plagued, emergency makeshift shelter created from city offices, a four-year old foster child was beaten and starved to death in a foster home” (National Coalition of Child Protection Reform). Foster care is supposed to further help the children and find them a better place to be instead of being at their abusive or neglecting home; however,
From 17,000 in 1998 to almost 30,000 in 2009, the number of young adults aging out of the foster system has exponentially increased over the years (Atwood). All these older teens without a place to call home and a family to return to because the foster care took them away, yet these numbers would stop increasing if family preservation would take over foster care. The foster care system does not prepare the young teens about being independent like living at home would tech them; in fact, most of the young adult homeless population is caused by the foster care system (Older Teens Cycle Out). Young adults who come out of foster care are used to having money given to them due to the fact that states provided money to support them while in foster care; however, now that they no longer have that money, they have to find a job. Studies in the past have shown that one of five young adults who aged out of foster care will become homeless within two years of leaving foster care. This statistic is most likely because these young adults are “shut out of jobs for lack of training, priced out of housing for lack of jobs, they also lack family support that can bridge the tough times” (Older Teens Cycle Out). The lack of family can