Argumentative Essay On Foster Care

Most children’s first words are “Mama” or “Dada.” So what happens to the children who are ripped from their homes, from the only life they have known? The foster care system has been taking children from their homes since 1912, but has it really done any good? Sadly, “40 percetn of these children put into out-of-home care facilities never return to their parents. More than half will be away for at least a year and the majority will have multiple placements, some in as many as 15 different homes” (Horrors of the Non Home). Is what the foster care system is doing really helping these children or are they just setting them up for failure? Although many people feel that the foster care system is the best solution, many nationwide organizations feel that family preservation efforts are more necessary for today’s society.

Have you ever thought about how it feels to be ripped out of the only place that you know as home? To get no explanation of why your parents just did not want you anymore? Not a lot of people think about this. Usually, the only people that do think about this is children that are experiencing or have experienced this problem. The children’s rights website stated that, “On any given day, there are nearly 428,000 children in foster care in the United States.”() All of those children have to be reminded daily that the foster care system has a lot of problems in it. Most of these children are put in some of the most unbearable situations. The foster system has numerous problems that I think can and should be solved. This includes: children not having an education, foster parents and children not having a connection, children facing both sexual and physical abuse, financial problems, and children aging out of the system. There are many more problems with the foster care system but I think that these are the main problems that should be addressed and solved.

Helping someone find a good home for foster children might be a difficult task to do, but it's not impossible. The work it takes could be long and extensive, but with the help of a good social worker, will always get done. Every year millions of children get placed in foster care, social workers are often overwhelmed trying to find adequate foster parents. Although some foster parents are caring for these children for the wrong reasons; there are still some good foster parents that are caring for the child, to benefit the child.

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.

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.

The pro-choice/pro-life is a major argument in politics in the United States today. However it is not so simple as pro-choice and pro-life. Pro-choice has been coined to mean that women should have the right to choose abortion and it should be a legal option. Pro-life has been connected with the banning of abortion and looking at a fetus as a life so abortion is basically murder. However this pro-life view has gotten very convoluted. Often times recently people who believe in pro-life do not care about the child after they are born. Their lives are not cared for past birth. Pro-birth is a new term has been made for people who believe in the banning of abortion but not any of the legal aid to help the children and their families after the child is born. With the introduction of the term “pro-birth” pro-life’s meaning is slowly evolving. It is not only pro-life but “pro-woman, pro-adoption,

When children are forced out over and over again it makes them feel unwanted or that they did something wrong. Patricia George writes, “Shuttling children off to a strangers home for a period of days or weeks, only to be potentially shuttled off to another home… simply underscores the frightening and traumatic experience of seeing ones family fall apart” (George and Walker). Not only do children have to deal with the constant moving around, they also have to deal with complications such as sibling separation. Sometimes a family isn't always looking to foster or adopt more than one child at at time so social workers tear brothers and sisters apart. In some cases, siblings will never see each other for years or even ever

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.

Protecting the child and provide an opportunity in which they will live a close to normal life is the goal. But with so many children in foster care and so little workers, children can be over looked. How can a child live in foster care their whole life? “It has been long stated and strongly held belief that foster care must not be a way of life for children, but rather that it is intended as a short-term treatment measure which, for the children’s welfare, must eventuate in their return to their parents or in legal adoption” (Kline,1972,p.51). Children eventually need to be put into long term, permanent homes.

Foster Care System Downfalls: The foster care system is setup to provide needs and protect children who have been neglected or abused. The main goal of the system is to take the children out of dangerous homes, and relocate them to a safe home, and to hopefully reunite the children with their biological families. While they are in foster care, their life should be greatly improved. Help should be given to those who are struggling with mental and emotional disabilities.

Foster Care is one of the major issues still faced in this world today. According to Crosson-Tower (2010), in the early 1800s, boarding homes were instituted with the idea of rescuing “good” children from ‘bad” parents. The study notes the idea of paying for foster homes to house children was renounced in view of agencies advocating foster care argued that it will lead foster homes to take children for money rather than out of altruism. However, the practice of paying for foster care emerged and the government became involved regulating and administering the foster care system in the twentieth century (Crosson-Tower, 2013). Her research indicates foster care became progressively more common as the form of caring where the parents were unable

Foster care is unfavorable to American society, because “according to national statistic 40 to 50 percent of those children will never complete high school. Sixty-six percent

There has always been a way for children to be cared for in the United States. In the early 1800s orphan asylums was the most popular way for homeless children to be taken care of. Then institutional care came around, where children were taught to grow up as quickly as possible. Placing-out was then created in the 1850s to use instead of the institutions. This form of foster care sent children to the western states to live in rural homes.

They often make poor choices that lead to their children going into foster care. Foster care is the temporary placement of a child in a new home. Today, I will be explaining what foster care is, the effects of foster care, and the process of adoption after a while of care. On any given day, there are about 482,000 children in the foster care system. My hope for the future is that people can learn more about foster care and realize how big of a problem this actually is.

Another way to improve the foster system is to have background checks, making sure that the people they hire, and foster parents aren’t abusive and horrible to the kids. The background checks for foster parents or caretakers could save abuse for the kids, and maybe even death, they can help determine whether or not if this is a person they want the kids around. This is shown in an article named, “U.S. Foster Care a Flawed Solution that leads to more Long-Term Problems”, they explain the lives of kids who have experienced awful people they were sent to live with. The author wrote, “Removed from the home of a mentally ill parent… Within months, the mother’s condition deteriorated and the child was killed,” (Stone, 2014).