Adolescents In Foster Care

Neglecting Mental Health In The Foster Systems Foster care was put into effect to help children out of dangerous situations. The main goal of foster care was only meant to be a temporary placement for children. This allows the parents to receive the help they need to make their home an ideal environment for the child or children. The foster system fails to provide adequate support for children in its care.

The Effects of a Broken System Foster care is a system in which a child under the age of eighteen, is placed in a temporary home away from one’s parents due to physical or mental neglect. Children from as young as a few days old to teenage years are placed in foster care every day. The amount of children in the system affect how needs are met and how high these youths are placed on a need of special care for problems that were developed before and while in the system. Most of which occur because they are abused and that is why they were taken away. Foster care is an escape for those being mistreated.

According to a Child Protective Investigation, there are approximately half a million children in the U.S. foster care system, otherwise known as congregate care (group homes and institutions). Children are placed in congregate care when they are found to be in an unsafe environment. Usually children of abuse or maltreatment are placed first (Font, 2015). Out-of-home-care causes increased problems of attachment, behavioral, and psychological disorders in the developing child. Child safety is the primary goal of out-of-home-care; however, maltreatment investigations are still reported in those institutions.

Common misconceptions associated with being in foster care portray youth in the system as orphans. Youth in foster care are supposedly delinquents, and will perform poorly in academics compared to their peers who are not placed in these institutions. In society, these stereotypes are often pretended, but very little people understand the circumstances and factors the youth in the foster care system are facing. Youth in care are often juxtaposed to their community counterparts, to signify the impact of being a ward of the state, rather than being with a family member.

The Effects of the Foster Care System on Children Foster care is a system by which adults care for minor children who are not able to live with their biological parents. The minor is usually placed into a ward, group home, or private home of a state-certified caregiver, referred to as a "foster parent". The government or a social service agency usually arranges the placement of the child. Of the estimated 264,746 children who entered foster care during (FY) 2014: 45 percent were White. 22 percent were Black or African-American.

The foster care system is something that very few people have experience with. People believe that it 's the best possible option for children who are in abusive homes, but that 's not always the case. Various researchers have found that abuse and neglect still occurs in foster care. As the amount of research done on this topic increases, more and more people are trying to figure out ways to stop it such as better training for foster parents, focusing more on the child 's needs and outcries of abuse and conducting more research on the topic. Some abuse that occurs in foster homes happens because the parents are ill equipped to take care of a child with special needs or with more aggressive behavior.

The increase in youth entering foster care and the poor outcomes of young adults exiting the foster care system continues to be a rising dilemma in America. This qualitative study will examine how Youth and Family Services Division Child Protective Services engage foster youth in early independent living programs and how mentors can help support the goal of youth adult’s transition plan that aids them to become self-sufficient once they exit foster care. Youth and Family Services protect the well-being needs of children who are at risk and provide services to families by increasing their capability to become self-supporting (Youth and Family Services Division, 2015). According to Schleicher (2012), recommended that there is a need to examine

In the grand scheme, “Foster care can refer to many placement settings, including kinship, care, an emergency shelter, a residential treatment center, a group home, or even an independent living situation (with older adolescents), but most frequently foster care involves placing a child with a licensed foster family (two-parent or single-parent family)” (Martin, p. 109). Consequently, there are negative ramification of placing a child in foster care. There is a high level of children that are placed in foster care each year. It is sad to say that all of the children that are placed there never receive permanent placement.

Siblings have a bond that ties them to one another for their whole lives, whether they live together or hundred miles apart. There are some situations though that split up a sibling relationship like divorce or foster care. Foster care can be the glue to hold the children's future together, but it is the knife that cuts siblings apart. The splitting of siblings especially in foster care can be traumatic and detrimental to those children. Due to regulations of age or number of children allowed in a foster home, siblings must be split up which can cause behavioral, psychological, relationship issues with one or all of the siblings.

Foster care is not a perfect system. Many children that are put into the foster care system are separated from their siblings and put into harmful environments. These environments are supposed to be safe and give the child a chance at a better life. However, children living in group homes are not able to develop secure attachment to the people who are supposed to take care of them. Children bounce back and forth from house to house, family to family, causing them to live in an unstable environment through most (if not all of) their child hood. According to childrensrights.org, Children will be “further abused in systems that are supposed to protect them” (Newsroom/fact sheet). Some children end up back into that abusive or unsafe environment

Programs for juveniles are supposed to prevent children from entering or reentering the Juvenile System. Current programs that are being used today for prevention can be altered to fit the needs of more juveniles in different situations. One of the extension of these programs needs to be for those juveniles in foster care. A great percent of children in foster care gets involved in criminal activity than the children who stay with their parents (Doyle Jr., 2008). If this does not get resolved, the juveniles in foster may start off with simple crimes but, without help, will evolve to harder criminal activity. One program that would be a positive influence for foster care juveniles is the School Transitional Environmental Program. It is a program

Neglect is a harsh thing to go through when you have no one on your side especially by the people that are supposed to help you find a loving and caring family. Foster Care workers aren’t caring and looking out for the children like they are supposed to so that’s where the neglect comes from and that’s why this paper is getting written. Are kids in foster care in the United States safe?. The Foster Care System in the United States is neglectful and unsafe for children because foster care workers aren’t screened correctly, the system is not monitored appropriately, foster care can negatively affect the mind of a child.

Life skills should be taught to the children in preparation for the future. Foster care is meant to normalize the child’s life as much as possible and give help where it is needed. Although the intent of the foster care system is protecting neglected children, it may be causing

According to M. V. Chapman, author of ¨Attitudes Toward Out-of-Home Care Over 18 Months: Changing Perceptions of Youths in Foster Care¨, one-fifth of children in these programs become homeless at least once in their adulthood (3). When children age out at eighteen, these young adults have nearly no support, nobody to turn to, nowhere to go, often leaving them homeless and alone. This statistic shows that young adults are often left without a home they can call their own because foster care programs´ rules and regulations. Frank Ainsworth and Patricia Hanson claim that during the placement precess, one in every five children moved six to ten times and every one in seven were relocated more than ten times during their stay in care (88). They also acknowledge that children who move twenty times or more while being in care is far too common (90).

Additional risk factors include having a caregiver who has untreated/unresolved trauma and who may have difficulty with affect regulation, depression, anxiety, and/or hostility/aggression (Harris, et al., 2004). Being a member of a high-risk group such as: having Native American, Alaskan Native, African American, and mixed-race decent (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2008); being a homeless youth, LGBTQ+; and/or being a youth whose parents have a criminal record or history of mental illness can impede on the adolescent’s resiliency and ability to cope with trauma (Costello et al.,