The foster care system. A broken system needing change.
The United States’ foster care system, told by Child Welfare themselves that it is a temporary system for children. The sad truth is that for some children who are placed into the system is that this is not temporary. This is a system that is severely broken. Children are abused, children are consistently forgotten about, and in some cases, children mean less than a little amount of money monthly from the state. It needs change and it needs it now. But how? How do we collectively go about doing so, the right way?
Dark futures for young adults
Most children stay in foster care until they “age out”, which is when they turn 18 and then are forced to figure out the real world with little to nobody to help guide them. They risk not being able to find a steady paying job, most of the foster children do not attend any secondary school because they just do not have the financial or emotional support behind them. Depending on each state, children either “age out” at 18, or when they graduate high school. About 20,000 children age out each year in the system. Approximately 100,000 out of more than 400,000 in foster care are still waiting to be adopted, and for most of them they never will. Kids who age out of the system are at a much higher risk for homelessness and imprisonment. We as a country speak about how we need to save our future children, yet nobody wants to acknowledge the children that we already have and who are forgotten about more and more each day.
Lack in background checks
The foster care system as of right now states that they do what is in the best interest of the children. However they do not actually do what is in the best interest of the children. Becoming a foster parent is actually pretty easy, Child Protective Services gives out an article stating what one needs to do to become one. A big red flag with this is that they state what type of background checks that potential foster parents receive, and it is only a criminal history checks. They do not do social media checks and they do not interview members of family or any friends about the potential parents. The parents could be abusive or even be pedophiles that have not been convicted or even looked at before. These people could easily become foster parents. This is not in the best interest of the children, because does CPS really even know what they are about to put the child into? This is very harmful to the child. Without extensive background checks, awful people are able to become foster parents easily. The system needs not just criminal history checks but community interviews, employers of potential parents interviewed, family and friends need to be interviewed. Financial checks should also be in place to ensure that potential parents are doing this for the child not for the money. CPS also says that when they do home checks, they look for signs of abuse and they ask the child if they are happy and safe. However, they ask this while the foster parents are in the room, so even if the child is being abused, they won’t say they are in the presence of the parents.
Too much moving around
The issue of multiple moves comes in. Children are sometimes moved from home to home, within a short time period. Studies show that this has had negative effects on the children. They begin to develop trust issues, which follow them into adult hood. They have relationship issues in adulthood, not being able to stay with one partner, or even in one area for too long, which also can affect jobs they may have as well. Background checks need to be extensive so children are safe in their homes therefore, helping prevent the constant changing of environments. On average, children will change homes about 6 to 8 times, however some kids will change homes around 15 times.
Lack of interest
Nobody talks about the foster care system or the children in it. Everyone believes that there is nothing wrong with it because they do not care to look into it, or even read about it. There is a large lack of interest which sparks zero change in the system. The government itself also has a large lack of interest. They heavily under-fund the Child Welfare system in each state meaning that they do not have enough money to be able to do these very extensive background checks or even hire more employees. The biggest problem lies here, in the people and in the government. The country needs to know, they need to hear about the issues so the government will listen. The children are not the most important thing within this system, the money is. That is what needs to change.
