Argumentative Essay On Foster Care

Imagine waking up everyday in a home where there is nobody you can call mom or dad. Foster care is a system in which a minor has been placed into a ward, group home, or private home of a state-certified caregiver referred to as a "foster parent". The placement of the child is usually arranged through the government or a social-service agency. The institution, group home or foster parent is compensated for expenses. The state will inform through the family court and child protection agency stand in loco parentis to the minor, making all legal decisions while the foster parent is responsible for the day-to-day care of the minor throughout the time the child is in the system.

The majority of children who would otherwise need foster care are in kinship care, which

is known as blood relatives mostly grandparents, aunts or uncles. Most kinship care is done without the involvement of a court or public organization. However, in the U.S., formal kinship care is increasingly common. In 2012, 25% of all children in formal foster care were placed with relatives.
Foster care differentiates all over the world not by much but every country handles the system different. For example in Australia, foster care was known as “boarding-out”. Foster care had its early stages in South Australia in 1866 and stretched to the second half of the 19th century. It is said that the system was mostly run by women until the early 20th century. Then the control was centered in many state children’s departments. Even though boarding-out was the way to go by non government child rescue organizations, many large institutions remained. The system is still the main structure for “out-of-home care.” The system took care of both local and foreign children. The first adoption legislation was passed in Western Australia in 1896, but the remaining states did not act until the 1920s, introducing the beginnings of the closed adoption that reached it peak in the period 1940–1975. New baby adoption dropped dramatically from the mid-1970s, with the greater tolerance of and support for single mothers.
Foster children in Canada are known as permanent wards, a ward is someone placed under protection of a legal guardian and are the legal responsibility of the government. Census data from 2011 counted children in foster care for the first time, counting 47,885 children in care. The majority of foster children, 29,590, or about 62% were aged 14 and under. The wards remain under the care of the government until they "age out of care."Once the child ages out the government has no longer any legal responsibility toward the youth. This age is different depending on the province.
Foster care has had a long history in India, first initiated in the 1960s by the central government. The first non-institutional scheme was introduced in Maharashtra in 1972. The scheme was later revised in 2005 as the ‘Bal Sangopal Scheme – Non Institutional Services’. Emergency schemes were operational even in Gujarat, after the 2001 earthquake where around 350 children were rehabilitated with their relatives and neighbours in the community. Even though JJ Act presently provides for foster care, it is not being used effectively. Very few state governments have developed foster care programs. Foster care is still largely used as a pre-adoption procedure, which is limiting the potential of this method to provide family care to children.
In Japan, foster care started around 1948, leading to the passing of the Child Welfare Law. The idea of foster care or taking in abandoned children actually came about around 1392-1490s in Japan. The foster care system in Japan is similar to the Orphan Trains because Brace thought the children would be better off on farms. The people in Japan thought the children would do better on farms rather than living in the city. The families would send their children to a farm family outside the village and only keep their oldest son. The farm families served as the foster parents and they were paid for taking in the younger siblings. It was considered an honor to be chosen as foster parents, and selection depended on the family’s reputation and status within the village. Around 1895 the foster care program became more like the system used in the United States because the Tokyo Metropolitan Police sent children to a hospital where they would be settled. Problems emerged in this system, such as child abuse, so the government started phasing it out and began increasing institutional facilities. In 1948 the Child Welfare Law was passed, increasing official oversight, and creating better conditions for the children to grow up in.
In the United Kingdom, foster care and adoption has always been an option, in the sense of taking other people’s children into their homes and looking after them on a permanent or temporary basis.

Although, nothing about it had a legal foundation, until the 20th century. The UK had wardship, the family taking in the child had custody by the Chancery Court. Wardship was not used very often because it did not give the guardian parental rights. In the 19th century came a series of baby farming scandals. At the end of the 19th century they started calling it “boarding-out” like they did in Australia. They started placing the children in orphanages and workhouses. The First World War saw an increase in organized adoption through adoption societies and child rescue organizations this is when pressure grew for adoption to be given legal status. The first laws based on adoption and foster care were passed in 1926. The peak number of adoptions was in 1968, since when there has been an enormous decline in adoption in the United Kingdom. The main reasons for children being adopted in the United Kingdom had been unmarried mothers giving up their children for adoption and step parents adopting their new partner’s

children.
In the United States, foster care started as a result of the efforts of Charles Loring Brace. In the mid 19th Century, some 30,000 homeless or neglected children lived in the New York City streets and slums. Brace took these children off the streets and placed them with families in most states in the country. Brace believed the children would do best with a Christian farm family. He did this to save them from “a lifetime of suffering.” He sent these children to families by train, which gave the name The Orphan Train Movement. This lasted from 1853 to the early 1890s and transported more than 120,000 children to new lives. When Brace died in 1890, his sons took over his work of the Children’s Aid Society until they retired.
Family-based foster care is generally preferred to other forms of out of home care. Foster care is intended to be a short term solution until a permanent placement can be made. Generally, the first choice of adoptive parents is a relative such as an aunt, uncle or grandparent, known as kinship care. If no related family member is willing or able to adopt, the next preference is for the child to be adopted by the foster parents or by someone else involved in the child's life . This is to maintain continuity in the child's life. If neither above option are available, the child may be adopted by someone who is a stranger to the child. If none of these options are viable the plan for the minor may be to enter OPPLA . This option allows the child to stay in custody of the state and the child can stay placed in a foster home, with a relative or a long term care facility .
547,415 children were in publicly supported foster care in the United States in September 2000. In 2009, there were 423,773 children in foster care, a drop of about 20% in a decade.
In 2013, there were about 104,000 children ready for adoptive families in the nation's foster care systems. African American children represented 41% of children in foster care, white children represented 40% and Hispanic children represented 15% in 2000.
Children may only enter foster care voluntarily. Voluntary placement may occur when a biological parent or lawful guardian is unable to care for a child. Involuntary placement occurs when a child is removed from their biological parent or lawful guardian due to the risk or actual occurrence of physical or psychological harm. In the US, most children enter foster care due to neglect. If a biological parent or legal guardian is unwilling to care for the child is placed under the care of the child protection agency. The policies regarding foster care as well as the criteria to be met in order to become a foster parent vary according to legal jurisdiction.
Especially failures of child protective services often serve as a catalyst for increased removal of children from the homes of biological parents. An example is the brutal torture and murder of 17-month-old Peter Connelly, a British toddler who died in London Borough of Haringey, North London after suffering more than 50 severe injuries over an eight-month period, including eight broken ribs and a broken back. Throughout the period of time in which he was being tortured, he was repeatedly seen by Haringey Children's services and NHS health professionals. Haringey Children's services already failed ten years earlier in the case of Victoria Climbié. In the time since his death, in 2007, cases have reached a record rate in England surpassing 10,000 in the reporting year ending in March 2012.
From 1993 through 2002 there were 107 recorded deaths; there are approximately 400,000 children in out-of-home care, in the United States. Almost 10% of children in foster care have stayed in foster care for five or more years. Nearly half of all children in foster care have chronic medical problems. 8% of all children in foster care have serious emotional problems, 11% of children exiting foster care aged out of the system, in 2011. Children in foster care experience high rates of child abuse, emotional deprivation, and physical neglect. In one study in the United Kingdom "foster children were 7–8 times, and children in residential care 6 times more likely to be assessed by a pediatrician for abuse than a child in the general population."
A study of foster children in Oregon and Washington State found that nearly one third reported being abused by a foster parent or another adult in a foster home.