foster children

a child’s life in foster care

There is a sequence of trauma typical for a foster child. First, there are the family events that have required intervention; then comes the separation from one or both parents; a change of physical surroundings, often without understanding of these events or their duration.

A child’s life in foster care is difficult and unsettling. Foster children are often moved among a variety of settings, including different foster families. These shifts present a whole array of problems. Having to fit in with a new family, a new school, and a different neighborhood, and to do this frequently, is not an easy adjustment.

Alicia Gallegos in her article, “Common Behavorial Problems of Children Placed in Foster Care,” identifies four major problem areas: attachment disorder; defying authority; sibling aggression; and crying.
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by the numbers *

  • 24,838 children had been in foster care for five years or longer (6%)
  • 32,247 children were less than one year old (7%)
  • 53,910 were in a group home or an institution (13%)
  • 123,437 were waiting to be adopted (28%)
  • 166,991 of those entering care were removed from their homes due to neglect (62%)
* from the 2017 AFCARS report

and a quote...

”Preventing their precarious lives would be ideal, but the system itself still needs help, according to those who work in and research foster care.”
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“Strained Foster Care System
A 'Meter Of Our Social Problems’”
NPR.org

the children I lived with

The foster kids at the Susquehanna Valley Home were in turmoil. The girls were years older and tougher than I was. Suspicious, always trying to grab a way out. Sometimes at night I’d hear them planning to run away. They were ready to leave. Period.

To the girls, leaving the institution behind and trying to make it on their own, even with no money and no place to go, was better than being penned up. They wanted to be done with pleading for three signatures on a pass just to leave the grounds. Making your way, creating some kind of life was a problem we all faced whether we left early or stayed at the Home until aging out at 18. The idea of having to somehow create our own lives consumed all of us.
- postscript by the author