Neglecting Mental Health Care in the Foster Systems
Imagine growing up in a home where it is normal to feel unsafe and unsure of what will happen day to day. When waking up, it is normal to hear screaming or worrying about the possibility of being abused. Many children face this reality daily. Imagine a child waking up and wondering about the next meal. This child may have to attend school in dirty clothes, with no access to clean water to bathe. These are just a few of the issues that some children face. It seems like a great idea to remove the child from these situations. The number one priority for the foster system is to remove children from any physical danger or neglect they experience. Once they are removed, they deal with being placed in a strange place, still wondering about their next meal or a place to sleep at night. Even though the foster care system provides children with support for their physical needs, it fails to provide adequate support for their mental and emotional needs.
The foster care system was designed to help children have a chance at a better life. It was created to help abused, neglected, or orphaned child in a temporary
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Any mental or emotional problems these children have will only grow. Helen Minnis, Kimberly Everett, Anthony J. Pelosi, Judy Dunn, and Martin Knapp (2006) state, “Childhood problems appear to predict difficulties in adulthood: a third of adults who have been in long-term foster care reported feeling under strain, dissatisfied with life or lonely” (p.1) At the age of 18, when the children “age out”, they have little support and experience a higher number of homelessness and unemployment than children who were not in foster care. (Zlotnick, Tam, & Soman, 2012) These children need to feel supported in order to grow up and become a healthy, functioning
As it stands, the foster system seeks to achieve these goals, but it falls short in many ways. Alumni of the foster care system are more likely to develop mental and physical health issues (Kessler et al., 2008). A factor in this fact is the lack of support that alumni receive once they have aged out of the system. The age adults are able to leave the foster care system is 18 in some states and 21 in others. However, these former foster children are typically not given adequate support once they have aged out, and are mostly not prepared with resources and information for life on their own, outside of the child welfare system.
Through previous studies conducted, the findings “reflect both insufficiencies in the foster care system and in insufficiencies in parenting and education youth bring into foster care (Scannapieco et al., 2007, pg 425).” As a result of children being placed in care most of their childhood, the findings of the empirical research must be viewed with caution. Such findings included that teens in fact have “significant difficulties transitioning into independent living and self sufficiency (Scannapieco et al., 2007, pg 425).” When it comes to education, compared to that of their peers, youth in foster care are drastically behind. A small percentage of youth exit foster care having just graduated from high school.
Danielle Jackson Carlton - 5 English 11 1 March 2018 The Broken System we call Foster Care Yes foster care is an essential system used to provide loving homes to children, but unfortunately these systems have become broken and can no longer keep kids safe under their care. Everyday children are being placed in foster homes facing abuse, unloving parents, and even death. The system has only progressively gotten worse leaving behind children traumatized to a point where no amount of love or therapy can fix them.
A foster home serves to provide a family-like environment for children who under certain circumstances cannot live with their biological family. Children wind up in foster homes for a number of reasons, reasons often misjudged by their peers. Upon entry to foster care, a child receives the status of ‘foster child’, which is perceived more in a negative way, bad. It is becoming
The foster care system shatters like broken glass and there is no repair for broken glass. Permanent damage can only be fixed with drastic solutions, redesigning the system is the method to follow. Foster parents go through hardships and trials while trying to adopt children. Children need stability and the parents willing to give them that they cannot be with forever. A reason for a shattered system is the result of a shattered admissions process.
However, these important needs in a child’s development are at stake when parents or caretakers are unable or unwilling to take care of their child or when parents fall into an abusive behavior towards their children. When a child is found in this situation, he should be placed in a new home. Foster care is the system that states, including Texas and its counties, rely on to place children that are experiencing difficult or dangerous conditions. However, even though foster care is the most common solution to provide physical protection to children living in an abusive atmosphere, the instability because of
Many children that go into the system usually do not have an education by the time that they were supposed to graduate. A lot of the children drop out. This is because many of them get into trouble, drugs and many of the girls get pregnant at a very young age. H. Robed Ayasse (1995) mentioned in his article that “These problems and the transience of their home like in the foster care system can have a powerful
However, youth who have experienced care, have faced harsher realities. According to fosterclub, foster youth are 5x more likely to develop a mental disorder, 25x more likely
Children can also interact with other children in foster care, which helps the emotional and social part of the brain. Children can also be placed in very good homes, where they are loved and shown what it is like to live in a normal family that loves and cares about them. While one, nor a group of people cannot change the foster care system, people can research to educate themselves on ways to notice abuse, prevent abuse, and thenceforth educate and help others. Seeing and knowing is the first sign, yet it is one that goes unnoticed.
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
Children in foster care often have a high risk of having developmental problems. Seeing that most children in foster care were, taken away from unfit parents a lot of these children have faced some, type of maltreatment. "Proponents of foster care note that 70– 80% of children in out of home placements have been maltreated in the home of origin..."(Lawrence 58). Because, maltreatment is common before placement, poor development outcomes are a risk. Consequently, foster children are at risk of falling behind in development, and up to 80% of foster children have a developmental problem.(Hodges 2156).
The alarming rise of foster kids in the United States is a crisis that needs to be stopped.
One in four foster children report physical or psychological abuse by a foster parent every year. Children with disabilities or a past of abuse are at higher risk for maltreatment in their out-of-home-care (Font, 2015). The young child is at the greatest risk for disturbances in the developing brain if their environment lacks stimulating activities that are needed for physical, emotional, and behavioral growth.
Without this attachment, children can often experience varying emotional, social, and behavioral effects. In contrast to children placed in institutional care, those who were formerly in foster care “had a higher percentage of secure attachment representations and a lower percentage of insecure representations” (Nowacki & Schoelmerich, 2010, p. 556). Another study had also found a correlation between the presence of social support mental health in youth who are aging out of foster care and who were victims of maltreatment. The youths who were perceived to have higher levels of social support showed fewer symptoms of depression (Salazar, Keller & Courtney, 2011). In addition, research has examined the adult outcomes of children in foster with at least one mentoring relationship.
Children are put into foster care for many different reasons that include physical, sexual, emotional, or psychological abuse, or neglect (Leve et al., 2012). Regardless of the situation, removal from parents can affect immediate and future mental and developmental health of the child (Bruskas, 2008). This problem is important because children around the world are diagnosed, and most of them will not be properly cared for. Adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19 have a higher prevalence of poor health, and studies have shown that 12% of foster kids do not receive regular health care (Gramkowski et al., 2009). There are little improvements to the system, and awareness would give enough attention to cause change.