In 2015, Judge Janis Graham Jack called the state's foster care system broken and unconstitutional and wrote that "those labeled permanent wards of the state" almost uniformly leave state custody longer damaged than when they entered'”. After he said this, numerous news outlets picked up on it and wrote about how the system works and how it fails children. Before that, many people probably hadn't even thought about what the reality of a child in foster care was, and many people probably still don't. When we think of children in foster care, they are often seen as troubled, aggressive, and sometimes even delinquent children. The definition of a foster child is “a child without parental support and protection, placed in the care of a person or family, usually by local social welfare services or by court order.” If that's all a foster child is, why are they seen as inherently bad children? Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay According to Dictonary.com, foster care is defined as "the raising or supervision of foster children, such as orphans or delinquents, in an institution, group home, or private home, usually arranged through a government or social service agency which provides compensation for expenses. Typically, foster care is meant to be a temporary solution until the child can be placed back with their own family, if possible, or with an adoptive family while a child is in care , should be given a safe environment to live in, have access to counseling, be allowed to be involved in extracurricular activities, be given basic hygiene items and clothing, among many other things, children in foster care should be given all of these that any “normal” child would have provided them. Children are removed from their homes and placed in foster care for a variety of reasons ranging from abuse and neglect to having drug-addicted parents. Once removed, they are sometimes placed in homes where they are abused and neglected despite protective measures that should be put in place to prevent this. It's actually not a big concern to the state if foster children are abused while in protective custody. In an article written about the failures of the foster care system in Texas, Cameron Langford wrote "But Clement said Jack rightly felt that Texas was deliberately indifferent to the risk of physical and sexual abuse for children in licensed foster homes... ". A large number of children in foster care, if not all, have experienced some sort of traumatic event and have never learned how to cope with it due to a lack of resources. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, mental and behavioral health is the “largest unmet health need of children and adolescents in foster care.” while up to 80% of adopted children have significant mental health problems compared to only around 20% of the general population. The harsh reality is that fixing this broken system is not a priority for the people in charge. For much of this I don't need to research anything because this was and has been my life for years. On September 30, 2013, I was removed from the custody of my adoptive parents, who I had lived with for eleven years and entered the foster care system due to years of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. I came into treatment so traumatized that I couldn't be touched, couldn't even be hugged without feeling physically ill. Once they took me out of the.
tags