Foster Care Reform

Foster Care Needs Reform: Inside Private Agencies
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

agencies and the acts they perform, but that is not what happens. More times than not, higher authorities that are in change of private agencies will cover up the truth or even simply choose to overlook what is happening. Change needs to happen, and that change needs to include either the abolition of private agencies or more control and monitoring over the agencies.
First, money is an issue. Money seems to be the main part of foster care that private agencies care about, when the children in their care should truly be the priority. Many foster children feel as if nobody cares about them, and these private agencies validate that in their minds. The government provides foster agencies with $2,000 per child every month, and they are allowed to keep up to 60% of that money. This $2,000 is meant to help the agencies provide for the children in their care. Alexandria Hill, a two-year-old girl, was put in a private foster home, and the foster parents were paid $44.30 per day, and an inspector believes that the payments were the only reason Clemon and Sherill Small were willing to foster Alexandria. The Smalls did not care about Alexandria, and that is made even more evident when Sherill killed Alexandria and neither of the two foster parents even attempted CPR, which they were both trained and certified to administer. The Smalls weren’t the only people that didn’t care about children. The Calizaire sisters, Sophia and Princess, were left alone in a South Florida motel by their birth mother. There was a knock on the door; it was the Florida Department of Children and Families, which had apparently been contacted by their mother. Not only do these children suffer the tragedy of not being cared for by anyone, but they also typically end up in a really bad place later in life because no one cared enough to prepare them for their life after foster care. A girl named Stephanie says, “Ten days after my 19th birthday, I got arrested for giving a friend some pot.” Drug dealing, criminal records, and prostitution are not uncommon for a child that has aged out of the system.
Neglect is bad enough for these children, but sadly, it isn’t the only trauma they experience.

Isaiah Sais and Shawna Adams both admit that they had been verbally and physically abused; Shawna was even sexually abused. NBC Universal conducted an investigation and fount that there were more than 127 recorded abuse cases in the state of Florida within a two-month period. There are also several children that spoke to reporters about the abuse they were exposed to. Stephanie says that her mother signed her into foster care because Stephanie and the mother’s boyfriend were always fighting. The Calizaire sisters told about two instances they were abused. Sophia Calizaire, referring to her foster mother, said, “She took a belt, she started beating me with the belt, picked up a hanger, she started beating me with the hanger, picked up a heel, and started beating me with the heel.” She also says that one foster parent made the children eat dog food. Sophia tells about one incident with that foster mother and says, “She told me to eat in front of my sister while she watched and my sister was hungry.” That same foster mother also punished her by holding her head underwater until she almost drowned. Apparently, harsh punishments are quite common. Alexandria Hill was also punished for “misbehaving”. She was found in a corner of a dark room, and was not allowed to speak to anyone. She was being punished for waking up earlier than her foster mother and getting food and water from the kitchen. Not only are the parents abusive, but the other children can be extremely abusive as well. Princess Calizaire says that she once stayed in a foster home where one of the boys used to try to rape her every night before she would go to sleep, which actually made her terrified to go to sleep at night. Mez Pierre was also abused by other kids in one of his foster homes. Mez says, “I was a little kid, they knew they could take advantage of me and I couldn’t fight back. But I did tell, I did tell

someone and she didn’t do anything,” which is, sadly, very common. People easily ignore and overlook the issues, even when the truth is being spoken directly to them; even when a child is asking for help. These instances of sexual abuse are just a few of many more. 7.6% of kids enter the foster system because of sexual abuse, and once you’re in the system, you’re approximately four times more likely to be sexually abused than a non-foster child is, and if you live in a group home, you’re twenty-eight times more likely to be a victim of sexual abuse.
Simple actions can be taken to at least diminish the atrocities of private agencies, such as a higher authority stepping in to stop it, but those higher authorities sometimes just choose to ignore it. A 76-page lawsuit was issued towards one of California’s largest foster care agencies, accusing them of abuse. These incidents of abuse were not acknowledged by the Rancho Cucamonga-based Interim Care Foster Family Agency, which is supposed to be in charge of monitoring all of its lower agencies. The lawsuit claims that the children were “caught in an illegal, abusive, violent, concealed, unconscionable ‘kids for cash’ operation from 2006 to 2013,” then goes on to say that the foster children “suffered ongoing, unrestrained terror, torture, corporal punishment, physical and mental abuse, and neglect” at the hands of the foster parents, which was “covered up/unchecked by defendant Interim (Care Foster Family Agency).” Because of these cases of overlooked and ignored abuse, Brian Joseph, a journalist for Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress, conducted an 18-month investigation of private agencies. He found that the number of children in private homes isn’t even nationally tracked. This investigation revealed that there are real issues: failed monitoring, missed warning signs, and horrific abuse. In Los Angeles, a two-year-old was beaten to death by her foster mother with a criminal record. Not only are criminal records somehow overlooked, but extreme injuries have even gone unnoticed. In Albuquerque, a boy in foster care was beaten so badly that he suffered brain damage and went blind. The system is broken, and the members of the system aren’t doing anything to fix that.
In conclusion, there are changes that must be made to the foster system in regards to private agencies. If people would speak up or act upon these atrocities, change could easily be made. The fact that there are multiple types of abuse happening at this very moment to children in private agencies that might not even be recorded is awful. There are children that could disappear or even die and almost no one would even realize because there are no records to even prove they live in these places. More observations must take place, and higher authorities must be held accountable for their neglect and ignorance. The one thing I believe will be the most effective is for people to realize what is happening and care.