Pros And Cons Of The Foster Care System

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.

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.

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. The foster system began in England during the 17th century and was created to help the rich adopt the poor orphans within their community and give them the help they needed. Within months, the laws set in place with the creation of the system had been bent and broken.

Tie to the audience: Some of the children that are in foster care might be related to you or the child could be someone that you know like a friend’s child. C. Thesis and Preview: Consequently, we need to do something to make adoption easier and better not only in the United States, but all over the world. Today I will give you a few solutions to fix the foster care system. I’ll begin by telling you about the need to improve foster care. II.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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).

We had a total of 18 children placed with us during that time – ranging in age from one day old to 16 years old. There were 3 sets of twins among them – two sets of premature newborn twins with many medical concerns and issues and a physically abused 9-week-old infant. I had always wanted to try foster parenting, but knew I’d have to have the right partner to do a good job. My maternal grandfather said often when I was a child that if he had enough money he would build a big house and take in all children that needed homes and hire a nurse and teacher to live with them. I never forgot that.

After a series of experiments in the California area, evidence has shown that children who are placed in foster care are at a higher risk to be diagnosed with an illness or disorder. The time in which one has underwent a traumatic experience such as, abuse, also has an impact on health. For instance, an older child isn't going to carry the same effects as a toddler who went through that same crisis. People have tried to come up with ways to better the system even if it doesn't make the system perfect.

To be loved, to be praised, to be cherished; three things that every child in the world wishes for. It is a parent 's job to grant their children with these needs. However, some children are not as lucky as others and are not blessed with the caring parents that they deserve. Luckily, the foster care system is there to help. The foster care system helps provide safety and care for children whose families are unable to do so.

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.

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.