Mental Health 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. If the foster system could recognize the issues it faces, perhaps it would be able to operate more efficiently. Perhaps one solution to this problem is to provide a transitioning program and offer counseling sessions to better support mental health and emotional stability. To better help these foster children, they need to feel supported

This solution will require the government to provide more funding for the foster system to hire more social workers. This will allow the cases to be more individualized for each child. Marion Becker, Neil Jordan, and Rebecca Larsen (2006) state,

“Children in foster care also cost the Medicaid program a significantly higher amount for behavioral health services than non-foster care children. Medicaid-reimbursed behavioral health providers received an average of $210 per person per month for foster care children, compared to an average reimbursement of $26 per child per month for non-foster care children.” (p.639).

Perhaps providing the funding for these services at an earlier age will help to prevent the needs or other services for these children when they become adults. This may help reduce the number of adults who grew up in foster care, end up in jail or on the streets because they were unable to become healthy, functioning adults to lack of support from the foster

Joseph A. Doyle Jr. (2007) discusses, “Children investigated for abuse or neglect are not tracked over time in a systematic way.” (p.1584). If the foster system does not efficiently track the wellbeing of these children, it makes it difficult to provide all the necessary support for them. Providing a program that will help track, transition, and counsel these children will greatly impact the overall improvement of the foster system.

Foster care was not meant to be a permanent solution for these children. It was not developed to traumatize or negatively impact the outcome for the children place in the system. Creating more individualized care and better systematic tracking of these children will help provide better emotional and mental support. If this is implemented then it will greatly increase the chances of a system that was created to help, become more