Transitioning Foster Children Essay

Growing up in foster care can be challenging, then transitioning out of foster care into the real world can be extremely difficult without the acquired skills and the support of family. It may seem as though there are too many odds and statics stacked up against you, waiting for you to fail. My injustice project helps to address these issues through mentoring and building relationships letting them now that they are important and can do anything they set their mind to accomplish. The concepts of social stratification, status, privilege and oppression relate to the topic of transitioning foster children by informing previous understandings and societal views.

To break down how the concepts listed above relate to the topic of transitioning foster

As a society we tend to view the positive outcome of a child by how secure, stable and heathy the parents are, so when this is not present we expect to hear about delinquency that will have occurred. Setting the child’s potential value pretty low compared to children that grow up in a supportive and stable families. Status is defined as “ a quality that can be understood only to relation to others in society” (Holinsinger & Sexton). The concept of status can have two parts being ascribed and achieved. Ascribed status in relation to my topic of transitioning foster children would be their particular race, age group, ethnicity and gender. While achieved status are behaviors and characteristics that contain some type of control such as the level of education completed, the religion practices that they still continue (ex. Prayer) and their behavioral records. Identity is “and expression of his or her individuality or group affliction” (p.83), becoming a label that describes the sense of a person. An identity in relation to the topic can be a female, a male, in adolescent. Privilege often