Foster Care
Foster children do not have all of the same rights as kids who are not in foster care. While foster kids do have rights they don’t always get them. The foster care system in Kansas has gotten so bad that it has came to Kansas being sued over missing or harmed children. Is the Kansas foster care even a safe option anymore?
Foster children have the right to not be locked in a room for punishment, and have the right to be free from corporal punishment, pain, humiliation and ridicule. So when u hear about foster kids running away in any state it not surprising considering that not every foster family follows these rules… According the the Wichita Eagle two girls were living in a group home and they ran away together. The 13 year old girl was led to being sold for sex trafficking for the first time. Later on she was found and was sent to the juvenile detention center where she was still a foster kid but she was later a victim again at 15 years old. In this foster home when the children would do something wrong they were locked up with other people doing the exact same things as them. Foster kids are greater at risk for sex trafficking because they have already experienced trauma such as abuse. There are 71 foster children in Kansas who have ran away, that should be a bell ringer that something needs to change. Kansas is a gateway to human trafficking so when 71 foster kids are missing it does concern some people. Normally 60 percent to 78 percent of traffickers are family members of the child. According to DCF records 85 children are classified as runways from the system each month in Kansas.
Foster kids have the right to go to school. Most foster kids have more troubles at school because of the trauma they went through at home. Some kids need many different kinds of therapy including speech and behavior therapy. A third of foster kids don’t graduate or get a GED. Foster parents are not allowed to sign educational forms, consent to evaluations and services, request an evaluation, or attend evaluations or IEP team meetings (unless the child’s parents say it’s OK). The information available for the foster parents can be very limited. If the child welfare agency does not provide you with school records you may not know the idea of how the foster child struggles in school or why. Foster parents can get an idea of how the child is in school by how they perform outside of school. Foster parents may ask little questions but nothing that can go beyond, “Do you have shorter homework assignments than the other kids in class?” Moving or transferring schools can be harder for the kids with learning or attention issues. Every child does have a right to education.
Children in foster care have the right to clean clothes, a bed, a heated room and a window. Kids will be locked and neglected in their room for who knows how long with urine and feces. According to Fox 5 it happened it a 17 month year old and his 2 sisters. But instead of a locked door it was bars with slits big enough to slide food to the children. The children has no contact to anyone with each other. The parents said it was to keep them from wandering. Once the children were rescued they found not to be in any abusive place but just plain old filth. Another story from Des Moines states that foster parents are going through an abuse lawsuit because they beat and locked her and her brother in a basement by propping the door and only letting them out to go to school. The girl says she suffers from debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder and regularly has anxiety and nightmares about the abuse. The siblings were locked without food or water but were sometimes given moldy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches slipped under the door. Once the girl was 18 she created a lawsuit against her foster parents for creating such trama in her life.
Foster kids have the right to be loved and cared for but not even 80% of them get it. They have the right to grow up in freedom and dignity in a neighborhood of people who accept him/ her with understanding, respect and friendship, to receive help in overcoming deprivation or whatever distortion in his emotional, physical, intellectual, social and spiritual growth may have resulted from his early experiences and to be nurtured by foster parents who have been selected to meet his individual needs, and who are provided services and supports, including specialized education, so that they can grow in their ability to enable the child to reach his potentiality.
Anyone around you could be treated poorly not only the ones in foster care, but by kids who live with their birth parents. Sixty-six percent of foster kids will be homeless, go to jail or die within one year of leaving the foster care system at 18. Young adults leaving foster care need emotional support as they steer the transition to an independent life. Without the social and emotional skills to manage the stresses of unfolding adulthood, young adults often struggle to enlarge the housing, education, and employment methods that are available to them. Foster kids do have rights but most of the time they are not granted them.
Works Cited
- Burgess, Katherine. “Runaway Foster Kids Raise Sex-Trafficking Fears in Kansas.” Kansas, The Wichita Eagle, 19 Feb. 2018, www.kansas.com/news/local/article200579429.html.
- “Foster Child Bill of Rights.” The National Foster Parent Association — Foster Child Bill of Rights, nfpaonline.org/page-1105707.
- Fox, Madeline. “Kansas Foster Care System Overwhelmed As Even More Kids Flood In.” KCUR, www.kcur.org/post/kansas-foster-care-system-overwhelmed-even-more-kids-flood#stream/0.
- Kaufman, Trynia, and M.s. “Foster Care, Special Education, and Learning and Attention Issues: What You Need to Know.” Understood.org, www.understood.org/en/school-learning/your-childs-rights/basics-about-childs-rights/foster-care-special-education-and-learning-and-attention-issues-what-you-need-to-know.
- “Rights of Youth in Foster Care.” Rights of Youth in Foster Care — Child Welfare Information Gateway, www.childwelfare.gov/topics/systemwide/youth/resourcesforyouth/rights-of-youth-in-foster-care/.
- Riley, Naomi Schaefer, and Naomi Schaefer Riley. “How Public Schools Are Failing Foster Kids.” New York Post, New York Post, 18 Sept. 2017, nypost.com/2017/09/18/how-public-schools-are-failing-foster-kids/.
Wttg. “Parents Sentenced for Child Neglect; Police Say Children Locked in Gated Room Full of Urine and Fece.” WTTG, www.fox5dc.com/news/parents-sentenced-for-child-neglect-police-say-children-locked-in-gated-room-full-of-urine-and-fece.
