Foster Care
- 1. Foster care By: Trevor Younger
- 2. Thesis • Even though the governments intentions are good to place children in better homes, instead of there original homes, that is not always the right thing to do. There are severe problems with the housing and where they put kids, they are willing to put kids where ever there is a open door.
- 3. General Information • Foster care is a temporary situation for child who’s homes are not in order. • Children are removed from them homes due to lack of infrastructure in the home, or if parents are having trouble raising the kids, due to drugs or other circumstances.
- 4. Things to do when you get a child • Show them love • Guidance • Support • Help • assertion
- 5. Resposibilites • protect and nurture children • meet the children’s developmental needs and address developmental delays • support relationships between children and their families
- 6. Cont’ • promote permanency planning leading to reunification with the child’s family.. or other safe nurturing relationships intended to last a lifetime • participate as essential and effective members of a professional team
- 7. Children in foster care • In September 2006, there where over 500,000 children in foster care. And 250,000+ in homes who weren’t family related. – Average age- 9.8 years old. – 52% male, 48% female – Average stay in foster care 28.3 months – 42% stay less then 1 year – 13% stay 5 years + – children’s parents who lost custody for good- 79,000 (Janelle Rae, author of Children in foster care)
- 8. How Long do most stay?
- 9. Where do most kids get placed?
- 10. Rules of Foster Care One of the new rules is that they have to be fingerprinted to see if they have a criminal record. One more new rule is that social workers are aloud to make at least one unknown visit to the foster home unannounced. And if you deny them access you loose your license.
- 11. Books For Foster Children • They are making “life books” for foster children that where in the system • It helps them have something that they can have ownership over. • A life book in a sort of way is a baby book. • It is highly encouraged for children in foster care to create there own books.
- 12. Children waiting for Adoption • Waiting children are those children who’s parents have lost there rights to the kids or have been in foster care for 15 out of 22 months. • 54% of waiting children lived in non-relative foster homes • 21% lived in foster family homes with relatives • 13% lived in pre-adoptive homes • 6% and 4% lived in institutions or group homes, respectively
- 13. Cont’ • 4.9 is the average age of when taken from parents • 8.2 is the average age of the waiting child at end of FY 2006 • 39.4 months is the average time of a waiting child in foster care • If in foster care or adopted there are perks, you receive health care, and you also receive social security till you are 18.
- 14. Adoptions in other Countries • Adopting children in other areas of the world is a big deal • it is more like buying the baby then just adopting it • china has a surplus of kids that are with out homes, and it nearly costs $50,000 to get a child out of there.
- 15. Do Case Workers care about the Children? • I think that some of them do, but there are some out there that could care less about the kids, because to them it is just a job. • Social workers only get paid for 40 hours a week, anything over they don’t get paid for. But I have had case workers my self that stayed late to help me and my family with things.
- 16. History of foster care • Foster care started in 1500’s • When of age they where able to leave • Children where sent to wealthy families
- 17. History Of foster care in the U.S. • It was first created in 1850’s • It was created by a pastor • He created for the great amount of homeless kids from immigrants coming to the U.S. • It took off from there.
- 18. Death Rate • Kids in foster care under the age of 24 die more often then non-fostered children
- 19. A picture is worth a thousand words
- 20. Negative Effects
- 21. PTSD
- 25. Over Prescribing • Children in foster care get prescribe drugs 3x more often then children living with there real parents.
- 26. ASFA • What is it? • Who created it? • How does it help children in foster care?
- 27. Foster Care in the News • November 2008 • 13 month old baby boy murdered in foster care • Case workers not following protocol
- 28. Why do kids get palced in foster care • Family abuse • Drugs • Alcohol • Neglection
- 29. What do caseworkers do? • Create a plan for child • Help get family on right path • Makes the decision when the child gets to go back to there biological family.
- 30. What happens next? • Kids hope to go home • Often get placed with other relative • Parents must also show progress.
- 31. Who can help • Anyone can help • Children are always in need • Organizations help the children also
Editor's Notes
- #4: Just explain some more on these things, go farther in depth http://kids.delaware.gov/fs/fostercare.shtml
- #5: These are important to show your child and teach them because they just came from a unstable home, and might not have been shown these things in the previous homes and as a foster parent you are trying to create a better home for the children http://kids.delaware.gov/fs/fostercare.shtml
- #7: It is important to promote permanency planning with the foster children, so that they feel loved and that THERE IS SOMEONE THERE FOR THEM WHEN THEY NEED THEM TO BE. Source for slides 5&6- http://kids.delaware.gov/fs/fostercare_responsibilities.shtml
- #9: Here it shows a graph of how many kids leave foster care, and how long it takes them too. In my experience I was in the 5 years + category. So on average the average child in foster cares stay in there for around 22.7 months, which is almost 2 years.
- #10: This diagram shows where most kids get placed, as you can see there are several different areas where thy can get placed (look at graph)
- #11: That there are new rules to become a foster parent because foster children are being placed into homes where they get beat and sometimes even killed by there foster parents.
- #12: They are making these because it is very hard for kids to leave everything they know and just leave.
- #14: Talk more about the services you receive until you are 18. or graduate from college.
- #16: This is very contraversial because it is needed for them to stay after but they just don’t have it in the budget for case workers to stay after.
- #17: It was started in the 1500’s and the children where made into indentured slaves. This was a step up in the living environment, and they where fed and cared for so the government allowed it.
- #18: Source- www.adoption.com
- #19: This is due to many children having slower development, causing them to be more pron to illness, or injury. They are more likely to have problems with substance abuse, accidents, and suicide. They turn to these options because it helps them cope with the outside world. ^ Mirjam Kalland et al Mortality in children registered in the Finnish child welfare registry: population based study BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 207–208. PMCID: PMC35273
- #20: Look at this picture. These are children that are homeless living and fending for them selves on the streets, due to the foster system just starting out back in the 1900’s. In my opinion this is unacceptable. Seeing this is wrong, people should have seen the kids and offered them help. I mean what if you where them? What would be going through your mind? Doesn’t anyone love me? What did I do to deserve this?
- #21: Harden BJ, 2004 This picture as you can see is showing the neuron system located in your brain. Children who enter foster care early in there life tend to have psychological problems like depression, anxiety, anger, attachment disorder due to leaving and being placed in homes very often. With this happening early in age, and a elvated levels of cortisol(a hormone use in the brain for stress) cause many problems
- #22: Dubner and Motta, 1999 PTSD stands for Post Tramatic stress disorder. Alot of you may have heard of it because of soilders coming back from war, or rape victims suffering form this disorder. “60% of children in foster care who had experienced sexual abuse had PTSD, and 42% of those who had been physically abused fulfilled the PTSD criteria. PTSD was also found in 18% of the children who were not abused. These children may have developed PTSD due to witnessing violence in the home”.(Marsenich, 2002).
- #23: Foster Children shown here in this picture are more prown to such medical problems such as Cancer, Autoimmune disease, Mental disorders, diabetes. These are severe problems. This happens during childhood when there are problems such as sexual abuse/abuse moving and leaving homes, certain chromosomes are effected and your genes get effected due to a protien called the Epigenetic factor. ^ Meaney MJ, Szyf M.Environmental programming of stress responses through DNA methylation: life at the interface between a dynamic environment and a fixed genome. Dialogues Clin Neurosci. 2005;7(2):103-23. PMID 16262207
- #24: This graph shows how when the foster care system takes kids out of there bad living conditions and put them into new homes they arent always safer then there original homes. This grpah shows a grpah of 83 children living in oregon foster homes last year where subjects to abuse or neglect from the foster families. This is a huge problem. Now these children arent going to feel safe any where they go, because they the idea in there head that they where going ot be safe and now it turned out that they werent.
- #25: This picture here shows a little boy on the cover of time magazine. Not because he is famous or did something good, or stared in a hit movie. But because he was beat to death by his foster parents. His foster parents, the ones who are supposed to keep him safe from people that are going to hurt him. The reason why he was moved out of his birth home, and palced with the state, but in doing so he was beat to death.
- #26: The most frequently used medications were antidepressants (56.8%) , attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder drugs (55.9%), and antipsychotic agents (53.2%). I think that doctors prescribe children these medications when they do not need them because when in foster care health care coverage is given to you, and to doctors that is free money.
- #27: http://cbexpress.acf.hhs.gov/nonissart.cfm?issue_id=2006-09&disp_art=1221 ASFA stands for adoption and safe families act. This Bill was created by President Bill Clinton and the bill was passed in 1997, the purpose of this bill was to make changes in the adoption system for kids that are in the foster care system. When this bill passed in 1997 the children in the foster care system where able to get adopted, cause the bill is about shorting the time needed to be in foster care for adoption to occur, and permanent homes for children
- #28: http://cheri-thomas.blogspot.com/2008/11/faliling-foster-care-system-family.html In this article it shows that a young 13 month old baby boy was beaten to death by his foster mother. The mother admitted to the police that she abused the child profusely. This would not have happened if the child's case worker went and checked in on the house and child once a month as they are supposed to do as part of there job.
- #29: http://kidshealth.org/kid/feeling/home_family/foster_families.html# Children get placed into foster care for the following reasons listed above. The state wouldn’t just take children away from there parents and cause them medical/psychological problems for no reason. They do this because the deem there living conditions are unsafe for the child, and should be removed and placed into a safer home until there parents are ready to provide a safer environment.
- #30: http://kidshealth.org/kid/feeling/home_family/foster_families.html# Case workers are the childs person manager you can say. They look after the child while they are in foster care they check up on parents to see if they are making progress, they check in on the foster home to make sure that the living conditions are safe for the child/ better then there original living conditions. Caseworkers also set up visits to be held between the foster child and biological family
- #31: http://kidshealth.org/kid/feeling/home_family/foster_families.html#