What 1 suggestion (not many) would be your priority to change to help the Foster Care System in the USA?

Question

Please, just 1 answer each person. I'd like to know what different #1 answers are to fix the foster care system. I'm hoping that by reading some of these, it might help me be a better parent to a foster child in the future, and perhaps, I can make a difference.

Answer 1

Electronic records - where every piece of paperwork is scanned and saved forever. No matter what changes are made, if they keep losing paperwork, nothing will get done.

Answer 2

Better work by the foster parents (education for them to know how) to socialize the children and teach them things they need to know for the future.

My parents are foster parents. They are OVERWHELMED by the stories some of the kids tell them. Most of the children are isolated and used as servants. I'm all for giving kids chores, but not to use them as slaves.

For example, one of the kids they get in respite for another set of parents is 14. She was drug tested in the group home before she came to foster care. She tested positive for amphetamines. She says she didn't do drugs and was moved to the foster home before she could get retested. That was almost a year ago. The foster parents treat her like a prisoner. She could have ingested the drugs accidentally at her mother's house before she and her sisters were removed. Even if she actually DID do drugs, locking her in the house for almost a year doesn't teach her anything. When the foster parents are going on a trip, they don't take her, they put her in respite. I predict if she isn't removed from this family, she'll go WILD when she "ages out". She is a bright girl, but she really has no idea how to act. Her two sisters have NO table manners. Well, they have gotten MUCH better on the weekends they spend with my family. Really sad.

ETA: Celtic, that's my dad and step-mom to a "T". They aren't trying to make money. They spend more money every month than they are paid. If they go on vacay, ALL the kids (not just my step-bro) go or they don't go. My dad get a heart-swell from teach the kids stuff. My step-mom is so loving and sweet. She teaches the kids about doing chores and taking care of themselves in a kind way.

Answer 3

To stop the process of unifying the family over and over again.  I think that any child taken out of the house 2 or 3 times should not keep getting sent back.  That happened in my state.  They took a girl, her mother said I'm better and went to classes, they gave the girl back, took her again a few months later, mother went through the process again and got her back, third time they took her but then she was allowed a weekly, yes kept the child for a week.  The child never came back, she was killed.  I am tired of birth families feeling it is their right to their child and then to abuse them that is wrong.  I think if they do not get better and the child is taken again then that should be it.

Answer 4

Following up & actually investigating foster homes rather than dropping the child off & forgetting about them until the next move.

Answer 5

I'm sorry but there is more than one thing that needs to be fixed in the system. I was a foster parents for 10 years and have adopted 5 children from the system. It needs better trained social workers with less children to care for. New regulations for foster parents to weed out the abusive ones and the one who only want to do it for the money, more support for foster parents from the state and new laws that require a child to be allowed to be adopted sooner rather than to sit in foster care until they age out of the system. I have seen way to many of that happening.

Answer 6

Pray About It

Answer 7

Fewer children per caring social worker.

Answer 8

Dear Sizesmith,

Since so many others have listed better screening of foster parents and easing the caseloads of COMPETENT social workers so that they can provide ACTUAL services to children and families in need.  I will give my third choice for a suggestion:

Penatlies for false reporting & penalties for NOT reporting.

Five+ years of working and volunteering in the Family Courts and working closely with DSS has taught me that there is FAR too much time and FAR too many resources WASTED on false reports. The system is abused by vindictive people to get back at each other (divorce cases, disgruntled employees, etc.) and these kinds of calls are both a waste of time and some have also resulted children being removed without proper investigstion and proof which is damaging to families who have done nothing wrong and over loads the system.

There are also many cases of severe and obvious abuse which go UNREPORTED by techers, doctors, guidence counselors, etc. People who are found to have been AWARE of abuse but failed to act should face penalties as well.

Both of these issues could be tracked and checked if there were better organization and communication between departments, SWs, CASA/GAL, counselors, schools and other persons involved in CPS enforcement. Too often these entities work against each other and allow for the system to be abused.

ETA: Sly, what a great response and I agree with you 110%!!!

Answer 9

better food

Answer 10

more resources to help the parent regain custody and be successful as a parent. Just having DFCS or CPS work WITH the parent and not so much AGAINST them.

Answer 11

The issue I had with the foster care system was that the parents they put me with were abusive. They would call us stuff like stupid, fat, ugly, worthless. In my opinion no foster child should deal with that. I hope this helps you improve this system. Good luck.

Answer 12

More help for the state workers, not just case workers, but CASA, GAL...etc!  Their case loads are tremendous!

Answer 13

Better evaluation of the parents

Answer 14

My suggestion is that it be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up.  It was a good and caring program when it began...a place for stressed parents to safely place their children until they were in a better and more solid place.  However, it has become perverted and distorted until it has become a cesspool.  

The money that is invested in it is wasted, for the most part.  The govt keeps pumping more and more money into foster care, but refuses to help mothers in crisis except to help themselves to their children and fasttrack them to adoption.  A child that is adopted from fostercare is big bucks to the system.  Every child adopted from foster care insures a bonus to the state.  That is a recipe for disaster and we are seeing it now.  The worst crime in America is to be poor now, and many of the children in the foster system come from homes that are good and solid, just temporarily disadvantaged.  

The system is hopelessly broken, I am afraid.  What started out a wonderful resource is beyond a simple fix.  JMO, of course.  

Sandy Young

Senior Mother 1967

Ava- did you READ what you wrote?  You said,"I am tired of birth families feeling it is their right to their child... "  It is always better for the child if their parents can get their stuff together and take them home to their people.  I am going to assume that you didn't mean what you said here, but, WOW, is that a bizarre statement.

Mama- Thank you, I agree with yours too.

Answer 15

Consider older kids when fostering/adopting

Answer 16

Better screening of Foster parents. My son was removed from an abusive home and placed in a Foster home where he was abused all over again.

Answer 17

Better, more intensive education and screening of prospective foster parents.

Answer 18

We need more foster homes, with nuturing foster parents.

Some homes are good, some are not and some foster parents are just burned out.

Answer 19

Ohhhh, there are so many.

But no.1? Probably the impossible.

Care.

Find people that actually care about children to do the job.

Find people that will sit with a kid, and read them a bedtime story. People that will take you out for ice cream, or down the park to see horses.

Find someone that will give a child a hug. That would make the biggest difference.

People that actually cared about us.

Answer 20

Not to give bio parents every chance in the world to change.

I am all for children staying with their bio parents when it is a good home but how many chances should someone get who leaves their child alone for days, doesn't feed them or provide even the very basic necessities, and abuses them.

If a child is eventually going to have to be removed from their home it would be much better to remove them when the abuse they have suffered is just starting instead of going on for months or years.

If most of the children in FC were not so damaged due to the abuse at their bio parents hands then we would have adopted from FC instead of going overseas to adopt.

Now go ahead and let the thumbs down begin since I don't support abusive people getting to keep their kids but believe they would actually be better off in a non-abusive home.