Aging out of foster care can be hard on someone emotionally and physically. One may not understand it fully until they have lived it their selves. Foster care may be good experience for others; however might be horrible experience for the next. I can tell you the statics all day long but then I would be repeating what everyone else is saying. I have something that most don’t have and that is the experience of living it. February 2000, I ran away. I was tried of being raped. I could not take it any more. See I was raped since I was two years old. There are three of us. Sister M, which is older by five years, and sister T, which is the baby. I am the Middle child. Our punishment was to be raped. Now. I was the strong one of the bunch. Therefore, if anything would go wrong, I would say I did it. I would take the blunt of the abuse, since I knew I could take it. I knew I was the strong one. I would always count down that I only had this many years till I would be 18 and I would be able to move out. In February, I could not do it any more I could not take it any more. I just could not hold it in any more. I had to tell my story. I ran away. I came back in the middle of the night and kidnapped my baby sister, because I was not going to leave her behind. My friend’s mom worked for the sheriffs department, so she called and I filed a report. Guess what they made me go back home. Yes, they sent me back home, because I was consider a run away. Therefore, for a week I was brutally beat for telling the secret of our family. That week was the week I wish I was dead. I prayed every night for God to take me away. I was grab by my neck and slammed up against the wall and released as I slid down the wall. A nail caught my back and ripped my skin ... ... middle of paper ... ...r parents the right tools to work with so they do not give up on the children and send them to another home. Independent living needs a lot of improving. Foster kids are expected to save enough money for a few months of bills in a savings account before they are approved to move on their own. Well they do not have a driver’s license to get to work nor do they have a vehicle to get to work. Usually a foster parent is not going to take a foster kid back and forth to work because they have other children to take care of. Therefore, most children do not get independent living so they are left homeless once aged out of the system. Independent living program needs to be set in place where all the children can access it if they are in school not if you have so much money in the bank. If we all stand together we can turn this problem around. These children are our future!
One of the biggest misconceptions that we have in our country is that foster care is a great thing; well, it’s not. There are so many flaws in our foster care system to even consider it a good idea. With constant reports of abuse, depression, lack of stability, to even the terrible after effects of the foster care system, like homelessness and incarceration; the foster care system hurts more than it helps. Our foster care system is bad for America, but most of all, our children.
Unfortunately, “foster children who have moved multiple times often develop detachment disorder: they become unable to attach to others as a defense mechanism” (Babbel). Due to this, children are taught to keep to themselves. They fear that if they open up to people, then they will become more distraught when the time comes for them leave. Consequently, their outside persona becomes a shell, while their true emotions become trapped inside. As a result, they have trouble forming strong relationships later on in life. This can especially prove to be troublesome in marriages, where these ex-foster children act upon their training to build walls against others. Thus, this psychological damage can haunt foster care children for the rest of their
When Cris Bean was writing the book, he mentioned a couple of times the fact of how traumatizing it can be for kids who end up in foster care. When a kid is placed into the foster care system, it can be very stressful and disorientating the first few days. Probably the hardest part is wrapping your head around the fact that now a child is in the foster care system and why are they there. Many kids that are older probably did not have to follow many rules since the biological parents where perhaps on drugs, alcohol, or not even being there at all. So, living in a new house with rules can be a very difficult thing to follow, or even if the child has reasoning for right and wrong.
This paper will contain research done about foster care, including a brief history and progressing along to the system today. This research interested me because it is a professional career option after graduation. I found both positives and negatives about the foster care system that children and foster parents go through on a daily basis. As the paper progresses I will be explaining these positives and negatives in more detail. Throughout the paper I will be referencing different scholarly sources that explain foster care in different ways. Overall, this paper will show different aspects that the general public may never know about foster care.
The concept of aging out of foster care is referred to those children who are within the state foster care system and who are still in the system upon reaching the age of eighteen, twenty-one or have graduated from high school (Craft, 2014). The causes of children aging out of the foster care system is usually due to the children not finding a permanent home with an adoptive family, or the state for some reason has not reunited the child with his or her birth family before turning of age. Each state has a different regulation on what the age should be when a child ages out of the system. Many children are not ready to make the transition of being out on their own, therefore, some states have moved the age up to 21 years instead of 18 years (Craft, 2014). If the foster parents or parent chooses to keep caring for the child after he or she ages out, then the child is able to stay in their foster home until he or she is ready to make that step and move out. According to Cunningham and Diversi, many of the difficulties that foster youth face during their transition are known and read about in academic literature, but those who go through the process of aging out of foster care are largely missing from the academic literature (Cunningham & Diversi, 2013). Many children who are in the foste...
There is nearly 400,000 children in out-of-home care in the United States right now (Children’s Right). Just about every day children are being shipped in and out of foster homes and group homes. Most people want the best for children in foster care and decide to take care of them until their parents can possibly recover. The foster care system can have both a negative or positive effect on children, foster parents, and biological parents because of the gaps in the system. Foster cannot not be avoided but the some aspects of the foster care system can be avoided if the missing gaps were filled.
They should make sure that the kids go to a good foster home that cares for the child and not someone that just cares about the money. There are some ways to make sure this is put in place. The first thing the foster parent could do is check the child’s phone and make sure that things are going fine in their lives. The next thing that the foster parents could do is limit the amount of activities they are doing with friends. They should not let the kid come and go as they please they should set boundaries. They let the kids just go off and do things that they want because they do not want a big responsibility the workers have given
For many teenagers, their 18th birthday is an exciting time in their lives. They are finally becoming a legal adult, and are free from the rules and restrictions created under their parents. But not all teens feel the same joy about this coming of age. For the hundreds of thousands of children living in foster care in the United States, this new found freedom brings anxiety and fear. Where will they live after turning 18? How will they get the medications they may need? How will they find a job with little to no experience? How will they put themselves through school? Aging out of foster care is a serious issue among America’s youth. Every year, 20,000 children will age out with nowhere to go, being expected to be able to survive on their own (Reilly 728). Young adults face various obstacles upon aging out of foster care, such as multiple health problems/issues, homelessness, and finding/maintaining a job.
What is foster care? Why do some people choose to adopt? What are benefits of adoption? How does the foster system work? These are questions often asked when people want to know what adoption can be like. Adoption is not something everyone is open to, but doing foster care and taking care of children from broken homes can change not just their life but the person caring for them. Adoption and foster care can be an option that should be well thought about before acted upon. Adopting can be a new beginning not just for the child, but for the person adopting. Before making the choice to adopt, becoming a foster-parent is a wonderful first step to take. Foster care and adoption can be a great life changing experience for the parents and children
In todays’ society many Americans never think about our foster care system. Foster care is when a child is temporarily placed with another family. This child may have been abused, neglected, or may be a child who is dependent and can survive on their own but needs a place to stay. Normally the child parents are sick, alcohol or drug abusers, or may even be homeless themselves. We have forgotten about the thousands of children who are without families and living in foster homes. Many do not even know how foster care came about. A few of the earliest documentation of foster care can be found in the Old Testament. The Christian church put children into homes with widowers and then paid them using collection from the church congregation. The system that the church had in place was actually successful, and was continued to be used until English Poor Law eventually regulated family foster care in the U.S.
Foster care needs to be reformed, especially when it comes to private agencies. Many people seem to overlook the issues embedded within the foster care system; all it does is take care of children, right? Wrong. Private agencies pervert the system with the nightmares they create. Foster children already feel unwanted and neglected because of the abandonment from their birth parents; private agencies provide them with conditions that further solidify their disbelief of care and love. Money comes first in the eyes of these agencies, followed by the need of control. This “control” can easily become abuse. It would only be sensible for a higher authority to intervene and put an end to these profound
One article about the harms of aging out states, "Each year, about 30,000 foster care youth age out of the system. Many of them exit without finding a stable, affordable, permanent living arrangement" (Richards 2). After aging out, former foster children also face problems going off to post-secondary school and finding jobs. This is because to apply for a job, one must provide proof of a home address. If someone is homeless, that makes getting a job so much harder. Nevertheless, the system does try its hardest to prevent issues like this from arising. There are programs like Section 8 Housing, Family Unification Programs (FUP), and Continuum of Care services, which help foster care children and teenagers after they have aged out. This being said, not many foster care youth know about these programs. It should be the job of the caseworker involved with the child to inform them of these programs. Furthermore, there is a stigma against children in foster care and those who have aged out. This may be a factor in why some do not apply for such programs. Foster care and adopted children are a part of almost every community, so society should try its best to include them and not blame
“About two-thirds of children admitted to public care have experienced abuse and neglect, and many have potentially been exposed to domestic violence, parental mental illness and substance abuse” (Dregan and Gulliford). These children are being placed into foster care so that they can get away from home abuse, not so they can move closer towards it. The foster children’s varied outcomes of what their adult lives are is because of the different experiences they grew up with in their foster homes. The one-third of those other foster children usually has a better outcome in adult life than the other two-thirds, which is a big problem considering the high percentage of children being abused in their foster homes. Although, the foster care system has most definitely allowed children to experience the positive home atmosphere that they need there is still an existed kind of abusive system in the foster care program that is unofficial but seems to be very popular. Foster care focuses on helping children in need of a temporary stable environment; however, foster care can have negative impacts to the children and the people around them concerning the foster child going through the transition, the parents of the foster child, a new sibling relationship, and problems that arrive later influencing the foster child long-term.
According to the International Foster Care Organization “Foster care is a way of providing a family life for children who cannot live with their own parents.”(2004) Foster care is supposed to provide temporary care while parents get help dealing with problems, or to help children or young people through a difficult period in their lives. Children will return home once their parents are able to provide a safe enviorment for them. However if parent are unable to resolve the issues that cause their child in foster care their children may stay in long-term foster care, some may be adopted, and others will move on to live independently. (IFCO, 2004) Foster care has been a problem for many years and although there have been many attempts to improve it; it there still seems to be negatively impacting
As time went on, being in foster care didn’t seem that bad. I thought that it would never end; however, it ended for me ...