Problems With the National Foster Care System

The Government and WE Are Responsible! Are YOU Doing Your Part?

With ALL the problems in our nation’s foster-care system, nothing short of a major overhaul would serve as a lasting solution to this national disgrace.

For years, children have been sentenced to navigate the system have been promised refuge from abuse and neglect in their own homes. However, without the state/county agencies being held accountable by no one, foster care remains as inconsistent, abusive neglectful and dysfunctional as many of the homes from which the children were removed from in the first place.

Without cohesion, leadership and accountability, the system continues to fail too many of the 500,000-plus children assigned to it. Once these children age out of the system at eighteen, the state sees the effects that this broken system has on society.

It's like all of a sudden you're 18 and they expect you to be an adult, but the system doesn't teach you to be an adult. It's one thing to be sad about being in the system but still have a roof over your head. It's another to be sad and homeless and unemployed. That's what the stats say I will become.

For the 20,000 youth nationwide who emancipate - or "age out" - of the foster-care system every year, nothing is more terrifying than the number 18.

It is on this birthday that these youth, many abused and neglected before and after entering the system, are expected to instantly become responsible adults. While many children outside of the system are eager to leave home at this point, their parents often serve as a safety net in times of financial or emotional need.

Most emancipated foster children do not have this luxury.

They are moved from house to house, forming few, if any, long-lasting ties to any of the adults they are forced to live with. Then, at eighteen, they are instantly cut off from a system that never prepared them to live on their own.