Research that Benefits Children and Families—Uplifting Stories

The topic I chose is the effects of foster care placement on young children and how to help them.

I decided to choose this topic as it is dear to my heart. I have met several children who were faced with the foster care situations. For some children it was for a short period of time and for some it was for a long period of time. I have seen the emotional roller coaster ride they had to go through. I currently have two children who are placed in foster care families. One is with relatives that she knew before and the other one is with a family that is total strangers for him. He is having a very hard time these days. Sometimes I wonder: do I want to be a foster care family some day. My own family thinks it is a great Idea but they believe that I would have the hardest time letting go of the children because I get attached to little people easier than to the adults. 

I have done several readings regarding the foster care system and how it works but it is still confusing to me. There are over 500,000 children in foster care today and two out of three children get to reunite with their families at some point and others have to wait for the adoption or for permanent placements. The numbers of families who are ready to open their doors and hearts for the foster care have gone lower in past ten years but the relatives who came forward to be a foster parent or a foster family has increased.

Most of the times the children are removed from their families due to situations of abuse and neglect, severe behavioral problems in the child and/or a variety of parental problems, such as abandonment, illness (physical or emotional), incarceration, AIDS, alcohol/substance abuse, and death.

 In my personal experiences with children and families in foster care, both parties need huge amount of support and resources. Both parties go through tough times at least at the begging of their times together. For the children, they are faced with self blame, feeling unwanted, attachment issues due to what happened, hard time with the loyalty towards the birth family and not for the foster family, hard times figuring out which house or person is safe or not safe, helplessness due to not having any say on  the decisions regarding their lives, and  not being sure about the future are some major issues.

For the families, it seems like they do not know much about the individual children, what kinds of issues they are already faced with, how to help them with the situations, how to create the bond/attachment, not having much of a clear picture of how much time consuming is the creation of bond with a child who has gone through a lot in life. 

I imagine the positive contribution(s) would be,

  Having the knowledge and the resources available for the children and their families as well as the educators to know how to work with each individual child keeping frustration out of it or at a minimum level should be the goal. If there is a better understanding of what the children are going through and what the signs are that the families, educators and community will notice before it gets accelerated would be helpful to every one. How to help the children before it gets accelerated is the best. It would be much better than having a four year old in the backseat having a kicking screaming melt down on the way to the school and not knowing what to do about it is a scary situation for any adult. Having disruptive behavior irrupted out of nowhere in the middle of the group time and feeling helpless is also not the way to handle it.

  I hope that this study will make a major positive contribution to the well-being of children in foster care and/or their foster care families regarding finding support and resources in the community where they live as well as motivate more families to be involved with the foster care system by opening their hearts and doors to the children who are in need of foster care.

Resources:
http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/foster_care
http://www.fosterparents.com/articles/index87nacac.html