Foster Care System: In Need of Reform Today

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Child welfare services should create a better environment in foster care homes. Children face mental and physical trauma every day in foster care homes like emotional distress, unstable mental health and surroundings, developmental delays etc. High trauma rates in children who currently reside in foster care or did, amounting to “one-half to two-thirds,” raises everyday (Dorsey, Burns, Southerland, Cox, Wagner, and Farmer 871). A nationwide social services policy on how to become a foster care parent or child should focus on the mental, emotional and physical state of the individual to decrease foster care abuse. Social services focus on sending kids away from abusive homes and jumping from one group home or institution to another instead of focusing on building families back up and solving the actual issue. A child can legally become uprooted from their home due to multiple things. The primary guardian has a drug problem, the living quarters obtain eviction, too many children in one group home, physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect of any kid, incarceration, abandonment, truancy, death of primary guardian, voluntarily placed, the child continues to commit juvenile offenses or a runaway. Almost the majority of the latter listed can prevail placement in foster care. Instead of wasting another life in the failing system of foster care, child welfare can create programs to promote children’s rights. Foster care parents are easily passing criminal background checks and state regulations and social services dismiss the idea of checking their mental health or other things. Does this person make enough money? How about the ability to parent? Educated and experienced on children? These aspects are not hard to check. Foster care parents ... ... middle of paper ... ...ir experiences with the foster care system and how it has affected their work." Children's Voice Magazine May- June 2009: 38+. Gale Power Search. Web. 23 Jan. 2014. Joseph, Danielle. "The Foster Care System Exposes Children to Abuse." Child Abuse. Ed. Lucinda Almond. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2001. Current Controversies. Gale Power Search. Web. 11 Feb. 2014. Maxwell, Lesli A. "Foster Children; 'The Invisible Achievement Gap'." Education Week 23 Oct. 2013: 5. Gale Power Search. Web. 11 Feb. 2014. Newman, Beverly R. "For the Love of Laura: When the Foster Care System Endangers Children." World and I Dec. 1999: 300. Gale Power Search. Web. 23 Jan. 2014. Thompson, R. G., and W. F. Auslander. "Substance Use and Mental Health Problems as Predictors of HIV Sexual Risk Behaviors among Adolescents in Foster Care." Health & Social Work 36.1 (2011): 33-43. Print.

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