Ok. Are there any good stories to share about Foster Parents? According to Dr. Phil -not too many. I found watching this program very discouraging. It focused on how great it was to volunteer and support the system by becoming a CASA- court appointed special advocate. The program focused on the children who did not have a good experience in the system. I do believe there are those cases but there are also the other stories. There are some incredible foster parents, who have given up life as they knew it and chosen a life of turmoil, stress, love, and new relationships instead. I wish Dr. Phil had shown the good with the bad. Who wants to become a foster parent if they are labelled as the broken part of the system????
One part of the program I did really connect with was: what happens to those children that age out of the system. Often they are on their own, no family, no support trying to make it on their own. I have thought of this often during our training. I hope that I am one of those Foster parents that is able to maintain connections, and help support former adult foster children through their lives. Do I have enough of me to give????
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I think it's about time someone speaks out against the system. Foster care is no better or safer than an abusive home. That's the reality.
ReplyDeleteAccording to statistics ad nausium, foster care
ReplyDeleteis actually 4 to 8 times more likely to result in emotional, physical, psychological and sexual abuse of the children involved.
The best chances you have of seeing your child dead is to allow it to be placed in foster care.
Wake up and smell the roses, the only reason Dr. Phil's show wasn't glowing with stories of great foster family's is because that's a myth.
Bill Medvecky,
flds.ws
I did a project on foster care crisis in canada and the stories i read from the poor children that were abused are so sad, i almost cried during my presentation :(
ReplyDeleteThe US has implemented Federal legislation which supposedly makes it easier for family & kin to foster ( and possibly adopt ) members of their biological family.
ReplyDeleteThe MIT study has confirmed that children do very poorly in *stranger foster care*
Think about it ---would you thrive being uprooted?