What you say is absolutely true. The trope of the neglectful, greedy foster parent is impossible to get away from. And if you provide love and care for the child, then you are trying to 'steal' it. Despite the fact that we formed our lives around these kids, made sure they visited and had frequent FaceTime with parents, we were still bullied by parents and agencies alike. The agencies will not hesitate to lie to foster parents to get you to agree to take a child into your home, and parents will not hesitate to lie to the state to get the child moved out. And both will throw you under the bus if anything goes wrong. Agencies receive 3/4 of the funding that should go to a child's care, apparently so irresponsible foster parents don't spend it?
Our most recent was a happy case, with the child being reunited with a healthy mother, and dad not being anywhere near. A friend had her life broken by two very high-need children born addicts with no parents around. She got them healthy, endured their severe behavioral issues and carted them to specialists many times a week. And every time she wanted to find a new foster family because she was out of money or just burnt out, the agency told her that 'adoption was right around the corner' to keep her engaged. Right up until they showed up to take them away with no notice. It was sick.
I never suggest anyone get into foster care. It's a broken system.
My toddler was brought to us at 11 months without the capability of turning himself onto his stomach. He had hair missing from the back of his head because he laid in a crib all day long.
The other one was physically and verbally abused by the children of the foster parents she was staying with. This is after being taken out of her original household because her mother had a tendency to live and do drugs with pedophiles. Other than her school clothes, all the rest of her clothing was too small for her, so she's got photos of a Disney trip (the foster parents were "Disney adults" who would save up foster money to go on trips) in her school uniform while the biokids were in normal kid clothes.
Realizing that there are kids out there that need someone to take care of them and that I don't have to be perfect to provide that care is what really got me thinking seriously about foster care, instead of thinking about it as "something other people do."
It's the foster kids who become permanently adopted who are a little bit different. They're the ones who understand that love isn't to be taken for granted, and so they appreciate it when you become the parent who will always be there for them, in ways that people who have never been so alone will ever fully understand.
Luckily, we bought and were gifted so many clothes for our foster kid that our own bio kids are now wearing them after they left.
It almost never actually happens that children you foster will go to adoption, since it is literally a last resort. Even if a child ends up in adoption, it will be years later and probably with someone else since those children are the worst case scenarios and are routinely replaced with family before re-entering the system.
1. Reunification
2. Adoption by Kin
3. Adoption by someone else
All 3 of the foster kids we adopted were under 3 when they entered the system. One reunified, and then was placed back with us a year later.
Fostering can definitely lead to adoption (and in particular there is a need for parents willing to adopt teenagers) but it can be a long process with no guarantees. On the other hand, it's much cheaper than other paths to adoption, either domestic or international.
In our case we are open to adopting (and the more kids we foster, the more likely it is that we end up in a situation where adoption is on the table) but we are mainly fostering because we know there are kids out there right now that need parents, even if just for a few weeks, months or years.
The good foster parents doing get into it for the system, so how bad the system is doesn't matter. They get into it because they want to help a child.
If that doesn't apply to you, there's still plenty of things you can do to help out; I ended up on that list from being a foster parent, but I'm sure if you contact whomever is in charge of foster care in your area you can get on the list. Usually whatever local version of child-welfare/social services you have will know what the needs are. Where I am, providing transportation is always a need (e.g. kids to school when they've been moved too far for a bus; kids to and from visits with birth families, &c.)
I was placed with "kin" and was abused further, then back to foster care, then placed with "kin" and abused further, then back to foster care, then placed with "kin" and was large enough to not be abused in the same way, then aged out and never spoke with those people again. The same with my brother (who is now addicted to drugs, living on the streets) and my sisters (went to different side of family, eventually adopted out, still went through drugs/homelessness).
Reflecting on it as an adult -- the "kin" experienced the same hardships, culture, values, and limitations in every case as my parents. Outside of straight up abuse (which was present within foster care and with "kin") the problem wasn't really with individuals (my parents or other guardians), it was poverty and problems stemming from poverty (e.g. drug abuse, homelessness). Everyone in my family and community was poor, and had been for generations, so I got fucked over by the system again and again. I lucked out of that cycle, but my siblings (and now their kids) did not.
I hear this again and again from people who have experienced it. For some reason, the message doesn't get through to the rest of society.
Not a good opinion, but how do we know what the real problem is? How do we objectively assess it without a better understanding of genetics?
What happens when we learn that your genetics are inferior? Nobody ever seems to think of that outcome. ;)
Parents generally have a strong biological emotional bond to their children, and people who have lived together for mny years often develop a bond too. It's hard to create that bond if it's failed or never existed.
> Outside of straight up abuse (which was present within foster care and with "kin") the problem wasn't really with individuals (my parents or other guardians), it was poverty and problems stemming from poverty (e.g. drug abuse, homelessness). Everyone in my family and community was poor, and had been for generations, so I got fucked over by the system again and again.
And yes, the system does treat us like crap. I don't even really want to foster, let alone try to get rich exploiting state payments for caring for kids. One, you can't. The expenses will always exceed whatever they pay you. I've already spent upwards of $80k on house modifications and buying a new car to comply with everything the licensing agencies said I had to do and that's before getting a single placement and spending anything on the actual kid (it does include pre-furnishing a child's bedroom, though). What I'm really trying to do is adopt, and since I've worked in the foster care system before (in California 15 years ago), I figured I'd give it a shot there as a I know kids who emancipate from the system without ever being adopted have absolutely terrible outcomes, even compared to other kids who have been in foster care. But, at least in Texas, there is no way to become licensed to adopt without also being licensed to foster, and because they privatized the entire system, you can only get licensed through a placement agency, and their own priority is placing kids in foster care. They don't seem to give a crap about the kids who are already legally free, and have even gone so far as to discourage being open about looking to adopt because apparently the state is reluctant to even place kids with you at all since their priority is the exact opposite, to reunite with the birth parents.
It's honestly getting to the point that it's enough to just give up and go for private adoption instead, which we were initially reluctant to do because 1) I actually want to help the most vulnerable, worst-off kids if I can, and 2) it is very hard to tell who and what is remotely legitimate in the world of private adoption and who is just bullying teenage girls into not getting abortions and then extorting people like me who have money but are not biologically able to have their own kids. Who'd have thought the foster care system would manage to be even worse than that?
I'm sure if you are sufficiently neglectful you could probably turn a profit.
> They don't seem to give a crap about the kids who are already legally free, and have even gone so far as to discourage being open about looking to adopt because apparently the state is reluctant to even place kids with you at all since their priority is the exact opposite, to reunite with the birth parents.
In California it actually used to be illegal for foster parents to adopt the children they had fostered, due to the conflict of interest. They changed that, and we encountered no issues fostering as willing to adopt (and in fact Judges would move kids to homes like ours to light a fire under birth parents; a "move towards permanency"). However, we were told by our agency that we were, under no circumstances, to directly raise any objections to reunification with the county, but to instead relay through them. Anything that even looks like interfering with reunification is a huge no-no.
They privatized foster care??!! And adoption?!!!
For what it's worth, even this varies a lot by jurisdiction. Where I live, you could spend $2,000 per month out of pocket per child, and if you took in 3 of the "right kind" of placement, you'd get back that 80k in less than a year. If you could keep the placements that long, that is.
Unfortunately, there may be reasons that they assume this. Just for instance: one of every three kids in foster care are prescribed psychotropic medications, gravely alarming the American Academy of Pediatrics. Notably, foster parents taking care of a child on such a medication are paid much, much more than they would if the child is not. The statistics on child abuse in foster care are alarming as well.
Also, being prescribed medication does not change the payment. There is an additional payment for children with certain specific diagnoses, but that is only loosely related to medication; a child with a generalized anxiety disorder, for example, would not qualify for extra payments, but might be prescribed anti-anxiety medication.
Also, w.r.t. the one-in-three statistic, the most common side effect of prenatal exposure to methamphetamine is ADHD, and if you send an elementary-school aged boy with ADHD symptoms to public school, you are likely to have medication recommended.
> The statistics on child abuse in foster care are alarming as well.
I'm not going to say there aren't abusive foster parents (because obviously there are), but it is probably hard to measure the level of abuse. I lost count of the number of (unsubstantiated) allegations made against me, and I can assure you I didn't abuse any of my children (foster or otherwise).
I understand California had this particular scandal in 2016 and passed some reforms. This is probably a consequence.
Not particularly surprising to me. 1) Everyone I met experienced some horrific stuff growing up, and 2) psychiatric evaluation and care was pretty much mandatory.
My experience in foster care was more positive than with the family members I was placed with who kicked me out after a few months. And yes, I had a prescription for antidepressants. I didn't take them.
That's good because children probably feel more comfortable around their family rather than complete strangers. Shouldn't the system be placing kids with kin regardless of the number of available foster parents?
Perhaps if you think the system treats foster parents like crap, you should look into how they treat children.
Here, there has been a greater focus on kinship care and in-home aid (i.e. not removing the kids) primarily due to a shortage of foster parents. There is a shortage of foster parents because the system treats foster parents like crap.
> “I helped her do all of these things that I don’t think a foster parent would have done for her. … You’re not invested in that,” Gray said. “But for me, it was my granddaughter.”
Not to pick on the person quoted in this article, but this attitude exists all around the system; there is an implicit assumption that foster parents care less about the foster children than a neighborhood teenage baby-sitter hired for $8/hour to watch kids.
> Plus, they aren’t as likely to be moved to different schools or communities, and as a result they have better mental health and do better in school.
This is a very odd statement to make; the foster care system around here always tries to place children geographically close. It's logistically easier, so even lazy social workers will do this. The one case where a child was placed with me for which there was willing and able kin was because it was not feasible for the child to make the mandatory visits with birth mom if placed so far away.
> Some states also pay less to kinship caregivers than licensed foster care parents
Perverse incentives around remuneration dog any government program. California does seem to have addressed a lot of these in the past couple of decades.
Not mentioned in TFA, but the increase in drug addictions is probably part of what is driving increases in kinship care; there are plenty of adults with serious drug addiction problems that have close family that does not. With other forms of abuse and neglect, it tends to be something that has been a cross-generational pattern.