I'm really starting to wonder just how long I'll be able to make it in my line of work... if I'll even make it to retirement. My dad has been working for the same place for 20+ years and will be retiring this year... but I just worry about the kind of person I'll be if I spend that much time working with, and hearing the stories, day after day, of youth who have been abused by their families and people that they have trusted.
I spent the majority of yesterday reading journal articles about youth who, after being taken from their abusive parents, were then abused physically, emotionally and sexually by their foster parents and foster siblings... the statistics are sad. Especially the one that said that in 44% of the confirmed cases, the perpetrating foster parent already had a history of accusations... WHY ARE KIDS STILL PLACED THERE???
It seems like foster kids leave the system more messed up then when they went in. They leave with a variety of educational and mental health problems, not to mention a lack of emotional support and few actual life skills... they end up homeless, drug addicted, teenager parents, unemployed, high school drop outs, criminal offenders... how much of this can we really blame on them? And how many of these stories can I take for the next 20+ years??
Amongst all my readings, I had an phone appointment with one of my distance ed students. Their first essay assignment is due this Thursday and I figured she wanted to clarify something about the paper with me. No... she wanted to inform me that she was having trouble putting her all into the paper because the various readings of child pornography and prostitution were bringing up past traumatic events from her own life... I can't get away from it... and the scary thing is... I'm choosing not to.
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WHY ARE KIDS STILL PLACED THERE???
ReplyDeleteI think the accurate question would be: why are they not placed elsewhere?
In finding this answer, the axiomatic reasons why there are such problems will be more clear. The fact of the matter is, unlike a lot of services (over-the-counter drugs, automobiles, internet service, providing shoes, etc...), and while of course foster care is specifically different in the nuances of supply, delivery, production, skill set, etc..., it acts on the market like any other service would - as there is nothing special about it in this most fundamental sense.
From reading about your time in "the" system (note the singular), it seems obvious that because of the monopolistic nature of control, workers and professionals are severely limited in their ability to do what's best for children, parents and the wider community. They are instead forced to be restrained, conservative and are plagued with a sense of helplessness and frustration as their genuinely benevolent motives are undermined by a monolithic structure that suffocates their ability to do what both their training and their ethics tells them is right.
My hat is off to you for choosing to stick it out and continue to try and make a difference in a system that has so many major issues inherent within it. As a teacher, when I pick up the phone to report an incident of abuse, especially when I know that it may result in a child being removed (and rightly so) from an abusive home, my heart still aches because the foster care system is so ill equipped to actually "foster" children. Instead, as you've said, these children often end up being bounced from one un-nurturing home to another until they are 18 and then they are just left to fend for themselves. I have spent many nights crying and praying for my students, just little 5 year olds, who must suddenly be ripped away from all things familiar, often even their school, and sent into a home, often with stressed out and ill equipped carers. Oh, it makes me sad just now even thinking of it!
ReplyDeleteMaybe your dad should take in foster kids when he retires. Sounds like he raised a pretty special girl.
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