Foster Care... The Ignored American Crisis

Across the country, approximately 1 in 17 children reside in the foster care system. Facing various degrees of maltreatment and abuse from their biological parents, these children are removed from their home and placed into the home of a foster family. But it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows once that the child is removed from the home. In fact, it’s a gateway for many other issues and challenges to arise.

Foster parents selflessly take in children who are traumatized, face a host of behavioral, developmental, and health problems, and are overburdened by the instability of their situation. Parents and children alike frequently lack the proper training, support, and resources necessary. It is crucial that more funding and resources are funneled into the foster care system to ensure that foster parents are supported, and every foster child has an opportunity to receive the professional care they often so desperately need.

Many children in the foster care system have underlying mental health issues stemming from trauma and abuse. More than half of the children in the foster care system have some sort of diagnosed mental health disorder. Foster children are also 4x more likely to attempt suicide and develop post traumatic stress disorder at 2x the rate of combat veterans. These findings speak for themselves. There is a health crisis that has been unfolding for decades in the foster care system.

The US General Accounting Office found in 1995 that if, “young foster children do not receive adequate preventive health care while in placement, many significant problems go undetected, or if diagnosed, are not evaluated and treated.” (909, Healthcare needs of children in the foster care system). More resources need to be provided to support and address the host of mental, physical, and cognitive medical problems of America’s foster children.

Another issue that remains is the training and resources available to participating foster families. Within three months, foster parents will often “notice a significant increase in negative behavior marked by provocative acting out and limit testing.” (912, Healthcare needs of children in the foster care system). These children don’t trust their foster parents and the new environment that differs so dramatically from what they’ve known.

The expectations of foster parents are immense, and they often report feeling overwhelmed or discouraged by the situation. Specifically, foster parents report dissatisfaction with the training process and often receive low compensation rates to care for the foster child. This discouraging experience causes many qualified foster families to “become dissatisfied with their experiences as foster parents and quit fostering within the first year of service.” (86, Meeting the Challenges of Contemporary Foster Care). This outcome is concerning, as the foster care system desperately needs more willing families, not less.

It is crucial that the foster care system receive the necessary funding resources to further support the children and their foster families. Without this, these problems will only continue to grow.