February 15, 2012 • 26 mins
As of 2009, there were about 423,773 children in foster care in the U.S. While some children may return to their original families, some are adopted and others simply age out of the system. Learn more about foster care with Cristen and Caroline.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You?
From House Stepworks dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline and on Stuff Mom Never
(00:21):
Told You. We have touched on a number of aspects
of parenting and family life and sibling dynamics. But a
listener wrote in with a really great suggestion that we
had not touched on at all, which is, uh, foster
care totally different kind of sort of emergency family that
(00:44):
a lot of kids in the United States and abroad
end up being placed in. UM. Foster care is not
meant to be a long term situation for most kids.
The goal is to UM get them into a safe
place and then UM have them end up in a
in some kind of stable home environment, preferably reunited with
(01:04):
their birth parents. But the reality of the foster system
in the United States is not quite so optimistic right UM.
As of September two thousand nine, they were an estimated
four thousand, seven and seventy three children in foster care.
That's according to the Child Welfare Information Gateway from the
(01:27):
Department of Health. And Human Human Services, and just under
half of those children had a case goal of reunification
with their families. And unfortunately, not all children are reunited
with their birth families. Some are adopted into their foster
care families or some fine permanent homes, but unfortunately a
lot of children in the system age out, which means
(01:50):
that they never found a permanent home um. And so
they are they don't receive that that feeling of security
and permanence that is ideal. Right, they turn eighteen and
been though they have been essentially wards of the state
up until then, they at that point become legal adults
and they have really no support system whatsoever. Um And
(02:12):
we'll we'll get into that a little bit later, but
just to clarify things, According to the US government's definition
of foster care, we're talking about a twenty four hours
substitute care for children outside of their own homes, which
would include non relative foster family homes, relative foster family
homes which should be living with an aunt or an
uncle for instance, group homes, emergencies, shelters, residential facilities, and
(02:37):
pre adoptive homes. Yes, and as far as the number
of kids entering and exiting every year UM again. In
fiscal year two thousand nine, UH, two hundred and fifty
five thousand, give or take, children entered and two hundred
and seventy six thousand exited foster care. And of the
(02:58):
children who left the system, in it up being reunited
with their parents, are primary caretakers, were adopted, and eleven
percent were emancipated from their primary caregivers. And just for
a couple more stats to give you an idea of
the foster population, it's typically slightly more boys than girls
are in the foster system in the US as of
(03:20):
two thousand nine. Those are the most recent stats we've got. UH.
It's fifty three percent mail versus forty seven percent female.
And the median age of kids entering foster care is
nine point seven years, and the average child in a
foster situation will move through three placements. And seven percent
(03:41):
of those kids in foster care will stay in the
system for five and a half years, whereas at the
other end of the spectrum will stay in less than
one month. So there's such a wide range of situations.
But sadly, with a lot of the outcomes that we found,
there's there there are a out of bright spots. No,
(04:02):
and I want to talk about a little bit about
where um, most of these foster care uh, when most
of the foster children live. I didn't realize that it's
so concentrated. UM. But according to Children's Rights dot Org,
more than half of the children in foster care live
only in nine states, which are California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan,
(04:23):
New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Yeah. I didn't realize
that either. UM. And compensation for foster parenting is done
on a state by state basis, and I found it
interesting that California is one of those highly concentrated states
because they have one of the biggest state level problems
(04:45):
with not fairly compensating uh these foster caregivers. For instance, UM.
This was a study conducted by Children's Rights along with
the National Foster Parent Association and the University of Maryland
School of Social Work in two thousand seven, and for
a two year old in the foster system, the foster
(05:06):
parents would be reimbursed four d and twenty five dollars
per month. When they went in and actually calculated the
cost of living for or caregiving for that two year old,
the study found that they should be paying the state
should be paying them sixty percent more more at a
rate of six five dollars. And that will go up.
(05:27):
And that's just for a two year old. If you
take it in a sixteen year old, the cost of
living goes up even higher. And probably for that reason.
In two thousand nine, the California Court of Appeals ruled
that the state's money compensating foster parents is so low
that it violated federal child welfare law. Yeah, it was
illegal and insufficient. And according to The l A Times,
(05:50):
writing about this UM, the number of children placed with
families had plummeted as costs rose and fewer families were
willing to take in children. So not compensating family is
enough for the foster care they provide is directly affecting
how many families take in children. Right, And we should
say that this podcast is going to focus more on
the situation for the kids rather than how the any
(06:13):
kind of training or process that parents go into to
uh to take kids into their homes. UM. And I
guess before we go further, maybe we should talk a
little bit about how the foster care system in the
United States came about. Indeed, references to it go all
the way back to the Old Testament in the Talmud
were caring for dependent children was established as a duty
(06:36):
under the law, so it wasn't something that people never
thought about. Taking in children was was part of as
as was taking care of widows. Um. The English poor
law in the sixteenth century lead to more stringent regulation,
and in fifteen sixty two those laws allowed placement of
poor children into indentured service until they came of age,
(06:58):
which doesn't sound like a a precursor to the foster
care system, but but it is. Um the practice actually
followed Europeans to America and was the beginning of placing
children in homes. And then for a little historical fact,
in sixteen thirty six, Benjamin Eaton became the first foster
child on US soil, although I guess it was not
(07:19):
technically US soil obviously back then, but the first person,
you know, first kid in the region that was to
be known as, yes, the United States of America. But
it wasn't really until Charles Loring Brace in the eighteen
thirties that the foster movement in the United States really
took off. He was the founder of the Children's Aid Society,
(07:42):
and he came up with this idea of taking um,
I guess indigent children from the streets of New York
to move them to the Midwest and the West because
of the new train lines. And he was like, we
could take these kids from the city streets, get them
out to what we're called free foster homes in the Midwest,
(08:04):
and they could they could farm, they could be out
on a land and be in a much healthier environment,
right he Um. He definitely thought that raising a child
took more than just you know, paying for them to eat.
They needed gainful work. Um, they needed a supportive, wholesome
family environment. And so yeah, he advertised in the South
and West for families willing to take in children, and
(08:25):
this was really the beginning of UM institutional care. Um.
He he didn't want children to be stunted. But he
also thought that there was a bit of a poor
immigrant problem in New York as he saw it, and
definitely wanted to be part of not only supporting these
children to have better lives, but sort of cleaning up
the streets of New York. Um. Yeah, between eighteen fifty
(08:46):
three and nineteen twenty nine, more than one hundred and
fifty thousand abandoned, abused, and orphaned children were taken by
train from New York City and shipped to families on
farms across the country, both to to be farm hands,
to get out in nature or get off the streets.
And although these trains were referred to as orphan trains,
many weren't actually orphans but were actually surrendered by their families.
(09:09):
And while transporting these these kids across the country might
seem uh, pretty controversial by today's standards, this really was
a revolutionary option to orphan asylums and alms houses, which
were where those kids might end up otherwise and they
wouldn't be able to learn any kind of trade and
typically would not be treated very well. UM. And one
(09:32):
side note to the Children's Aid Society and the work
that Charles Loring Brace did UM. One of their projects
was starting up mother's meetings for poorer women in New
York City. UM and it was the forerunner to p
t A because these teachers would teach mothers basically how
to be better mothers. And this was taking place I
(09:54):
think they first started in eighteen sixty three. So not
only was h is braced trying to get kids off
the street, but also rehabilitate entire families, which is a
theme that is still um, you know, idealized in the
foster care system that we have in place today. But
um it's a it's a hard, um and challenging goal
(10:19):
to meet in reality, right And you could say that
it's a challenge because out of home placement is associated
with disruptions and attachment. And this is according to a
University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics analysis from two thousand.
They found that losses and lack of permanence undermine a
child's attempt to form a secure attachment with a primary caregiver.
(10:41):
So children who are you know, shuttled around from foster
care home to foster home, or even if they're simply
taken moved one time from their biological family to a
foster family. That upsets a child's stability, and even visits
with parents can be upsetting to young children and disruptive
to development if they are trying to um get used
(11:02):
to their foster family. And the longer than a child
stays in foster care, the less of the chance they
have of reuniting with birth parents and along with that,
you'll see often an increase in behavioral problems. Now, the
behavioral problems for kids in foster care, obviously are are
largely predicted by behavioral problems and abuse that they might
(11:24):
have suffered going into the foster system. But that issue
of stability is is such a big determinant of outcomes
for kids in this system. In a two thousand seven
m I T study, these abused children who were placed
in foster care were found to be far more likely
than other children to commit crimes, drop out of school,
(11:44):
join welfare, experienced substance abuse problems, or enter the homeless population.
And another study found that UM among the youth formerly
in foster care, the twelve month rate of panic disorder
was three times that of the general population, and along
with it, they had a seven times higher rate of
drug dependence, seven times high rate of bulimia, and twice
(12:07):
the rate of alcohol dependence. So you have all of
these negative behaviors going on and UM. There was one
study that was cited in a presentation from d Wilson,
whose executive director of the Northwest Institute for Children and Families,
and she references this study comparing maltreated kids moved from
(12:29):
their homes into some kind of foster situation to maltreated
kids who remain in their home and it possibly still
abusive home environment but there, but they're there. They're obviously
have case workers that are coming in and trying to
to manage the in home environment. And the kids who
are moved out of their homes actually failed worse behaviorally,
(12:50):
which underscores to these researchers just how important that home
relationship and the parental relationship really is to understand how
to service those children and getting them out of abusive
or neglectful environments while not robbing them of what the
obviously crucial role of a stable home environment is still
(13:13):
a giant puzzle for researchers. Yeah, and the recommendation out
of a part of a Casey National Alumni study, and
they refer to youth formerly in foster care as alumni.
One of the recommendations is to increase access to mental
health screening and treatment for youth in foster care and
those who have been adopted out or aged out, because
(13:35):
they just tend to have more of these problems that
we've talked about, a lot of it comes from that
disruption in the family life and the connections to their
family well and according to the National Survey of Child
and Adolescent Well Being UM, it seems that infants and
toddlers actually fair worst on developmental measures after eighteen months
in care. And that might be because the younger the population,
(13:59):
the foster population, the more vulnerable that they've been to
UM caregiver mistreatment before they are taken out of the home. Right.
There was one UM instance where what study was it
that we read where a guy was talking about how
he had gone through the system, but he it took
him years before he realized that his his last family,
(14:20):
his permanent family. They were not going to hurt him
or abuse him. But he had been exposed to so
many different homes where he had experienced abuse that he
was just he was used to it, and he expected
to be treated poorly by families who took him in UM.
And there's also some scholarship indicating the kinship care, as
in moving children out of maybe home with their parents
(14:44):
to a relative is more stable than foster care. And
again there it seems to be that that connection to
the family UM. But I'm sure it is a huge
problem for these case workers who obviously they want to
ensure the best treatment for the children. UM. But once
you break those ties, you know, what do you what
(15:06):
do you do? I'm sure it's it's it's difficult all around. Yeah,
And there's definitely an effort to maintain the family ties.
It's it's not a quick simple process to put a
child in the foster care system. According to the Child
Welfare Information Gateway, before a decision is made to remove
a child, child welfare staff must make reasonable efforts to
(15:27):
safely maintain children with their family and that could include
providing support services, having court intervention, and that court intervention
depends on the risk to the child, whether it's low
to moderate or no risk or or moderate too high.
And like I said, it's not a quick process. Claims
of abuse or neglect have to be investigated, and if
(15:48):
the child is at low to moderate risk, referrals may
be made to community based or volunteer in home child
welfare services. So definitely maintaining UM the family and then
from moderate to high risk children, family may be offered
in home services or may seek court intervention and the
court may eventually order removal. UH. And once children are placed,
(16:10):
we should mention that adoption does happen. UM foster parents
do have the ability to adopt foster kids. It used
to be before in the nineteen seventies it was discouraged
for fear of losing good foster families and this idea
that older kids are unadoptable. Which all of this reminds
(16:31):
me that we do have yet to do podcasts on adoption,
which we promised will get around two UM. But since
then the pathway for foster care adoption has been opened
up a lot more. And in two thousand two, for example,
twenty seven thousand, or fifty three percent of the fifty
(16:52):
three thousand children who are adopted directly from foster care
that year were adopted by their foster parents. There are
quite a lot of benefits to having a foster family
adopt their foster child. If it comes to that UM
foster parents have a greater knowledge of the child's experiences.
It provides more consistency for the child. The parents know
(17:12):
what to expect, you know, if the child has any
it has you know, previous issues, maybe coming from an
abusive family or having UM drug or alcohol dependence. And
they're familiar with the birth families. So if if the
child you know if their ties there, if the child
is trying to maintain ties or the family wants to
maintain ties, they're they're familiar with the family as well,
And this would be a a good time to to
(17:34):
mention biological children of foster parents, because that was one
question that I had, was, UM, how the foster system
affects you know, kids who are are born and raised
in those foster homes. And there actually has not been
that much research done on it, and there was there
was one outcome study that we did run across. It
(17:55):
was it was a pretty small sample of interviews with
kids who had, you know, the biological children who had
grown up UM with foster parents. And not surprisingly, there
are some pretty unique challenges that go along with that. UM.
For instance, they found that us some biological children resented
the foster children for having talking about their own family UM.
(18:17):
Some foster children resisted the emotional adoption into the foster family,
which could cause tension with the biological kids, and some
biological children noted strong feelings of being less important to
their parents because their needs were perceived to be less
great and and they they even included this this diagram
(18:37):
of sort of a hierarchy that can sometimes just naturally
evolve within foster families between the needs of biological children
versus the foster children, and how parents can um you know,
service all of those things while maintaining healthy relations between
all of the kids, right, And it depends on how
(18:58):
long the foster child is with the family UM as
far as how close they get with all the members
of the family. And some children reported in this study
they interviewed, they talked to four adults and five children
like still children biological children UM and some reported that
while the foster child was taken in, he or she
did not become part of the nucleus of the family.
(19:20):
And there were several reasons given, some of those being
maybe the family is burned out. The kids are feeling
burned out from from caring taking in someone and caring
for them, And some parents operate this way to protect
the biological children and to compensate for all the time
and focus on the foster children. So some families might
just be trying so hard to balance you know, here
are biological children, but we've also promised to take care
(19:41):
of this other child. But it seems like for for
foster kids in particular, the biggest risk factor is that
issue of aging out of the system. This is happening
to roughly two kids every year who are in the
US who are turning eighteen, and uh, they don't really
have anywhere to turn. A lot of them might end
(20:02):
up in a homeless shelter on their eighteenth birthday because
of that. Yeah. Um, going back to Children's Rights dot Org,
they talked about children aging out of the system without
a permanent family, and like Kristen just said, twelve to
thirty percent struggled with homelessness after they aged out. And
this is looking at several different studies, which is why
the range of percentages is there. Um, forty six did
(20:27):
not complete high school and twenty five to fifty five
were found to be unemployed. And one thing that I found,
um interesting is the high rate of young women who
ended up pregnant within twelve to eighteen months of leaving
foster care, which is such a short a short time.
And also, uh, not surprisingly, fifty percent experienced extreme financial hardship. Yeah,
(20:49):
if you don't have anyone supporting you, I mean, it
would be hard to get through college and then finding
a job afterwards. So we have painted a pretty dire
picture of foster care in the US UM on a
more positive note. To to end things maybe on an upswing.
The government has tried to address some of these problems
(21:13):
UM in recent years. The Pew Commission on Children in
Foster Care, sponsored by the Putitable Trust, underwent a two
thousand four year long intensive study of the foster care
system in the US, and as a result of the
recommendations that they made UM from that research, in October
(21:36):
two thousand eight, Fostering Connections to Success and an Increasing
Adoptions Act was passed unanimously by Congress and signed into
law by President Bush and UM. That piece of legislation
was the most comprehensive foster care revision that the Congress
had made in decades. Um and An authorized federal resources
(21:58):
to allow more children to leave foster care for safe,
permanent homes with family members, and it also allowed for
provisions to support the adoption of children from foster care,
especially older youth and those with special needs. And then finally,
it paved the way for tribal governments to be able
to receive foster care funds directly from the federal government,
(22:18):
thus ensuring that more American, Indian, and Alaskan Native children
can remain with their own communities, because that has been
a huge problem of Native American children being plucked from
their tribal communities and sent away to private group homes. Right, So,
I want to hear from our listeners who have been
involved in the system. Do we have any social workers
(22:39):
out there who can comment on some of these statistics.
Do we have people who have been through the system themselves,
or how about foster families out there, right, because like
we said, we're really talking about and focusing on the
situation for the kids. Um, So foster parents out there.
I mean, I can't imagine that it is an easy
job and it's certainly does not come with um huge
(23:03):
financial reward um. So, so please anyone involved who can
give us some insight because we've been going through a
lot of statistics and a lot of studies, a lot
of which you're predistressing. It's pretty grim, I've got to say.
But let us know your thoughts. As always, mom stuff
at Discovery dot com is where you can send your thoughts,
(23:23):
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us a comment up there, or you can tweet us
if you are very succinct at Mom's Stuff podcast. We
got a couple of letters right now to read. Okay,
this is from Christie. The subday line is why I exercise,
(23:45):
And now I still really want to know why people
exercise because I need some sort of motivation. Anyway, she says,
just finish your episode about exercise. I have two reasons
why I get up at three thirty am to juice
and then go running up down my three and a
half fear old daughter and my ten month old son.
Not only does it give me the energy to make
it through the day, including bath and bedtime, but I'm
(24:06):
setting a good example for them both, particularly my daughter.
It paid off a couple of weeks ago when we
ordered some new shoes for Lily. When they arrived and
she put them on, she ran around exclaiming, I have
mommy writting shoes. When I am still so amazed by
the fact that she makes up at three thirty in
the morning. That's the middle of the night. If I
roll over at three thirty in the morning and I
look at the clock, I'm like, oh, thank god, it's
(24:29):
so much time to sleep. And she's a mother. Yeah,
good for her. She's exercise thing does give you more
energy to make it to the day, but I need
the energy to exercise first, right exactly, and the morning
exercises is a big hurdle for me. Well, I've got
one here from Justine about our episode on Martha Stewart,
and she says, I just had to write in about
(24:49):
Martha Stewart to stay hecky. Yes, she is an excellent
role model. She is just as much of a feminist
as Hillary Clinton. The same right to equal opportunity that
allows a woman to be a world political leader or marine, says,
she can also choose to pour her heart into cooking, cleaning, crafting,
and entertaining or anything else she likes. The freedom is
(25:10):
in the choosing. Does Martha sometimes go a bit crazy? Yes,
her legions of adoring fans will tell you that that's
what lifts her from entertaining to sublime. She certainly doesn't
do this work to please a man or fit a mole,
and it seems to me that she does it for
the sake of making a wonderful life for herself and
those she loves. And what is more admirable than that. Indeed, Justine,
(25:33):
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(25:55):
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thousand twelve camera. It's ready, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You?
From House Stepworks dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline and on Stuff Mom Never
(00:21):
Told You. We have touched on a number of aspects
of parenting and family life and sibling dynamics. But a
listener wrote in with a really great suggestion that we
had not touched on at all, which is, uh, foster
care totally different kind of sort of emergency family that
(00:44):
a lot of kids in the United States and abroad
end up being placed in. UM. Foster care is not
meant to be a long term situation for most kids.
The goal is to UM get them into a safe
place and then UM have them end up in a
in some kind of stable home environment, preferably reunited with
(01:04):
their birth parents. But the reality of the foster system
in the United States is not quite so optimistic right UM.
As of September two thousand nine, they were an estimated
four thousand, seven and seventy three children in foster care.
That's according to the Child Welfare Information Gateway from the
(01:27):
Department of Health. And Human Human Services, and just under
half of those children had a case goal of reunification
with their families. And unfortunately, not all children are reunited
with their birth families. Some are adopted into their foster
care families or some fine permanent homes, but unfortunately a
lot of children in the system age out, which means
(01:50):
that they never found a permanent home um. And so
they are they don't receive that that feeling of security
and permanence that is ideal. Right, they turn eighteen and
been though they have been essentially wards of the state
up until then, they at that point become legal adults
and they have really no support system whatsoever. Um And
(02:12):
we'll we'll get into that a little bit later, but
just to clarify things, According to the US government's definition
of foster care, we're talking about a twenty four hours
substitute care for children outside of their own homes, which
would include non relative foster family homes, relative foster family
homes which should be living with an aunt or an
uncle for instance, group homes, emergencies, shelters, residential facilities, and
(02:37):
pre adoptive homes. Yes, and as far as the number
of kids entering and exiting every year UM again. In
fiscal year two thousand nine, UH, two hundred and fifty
five thousand, give or take, children entered and two hundred
and seventy six thousand exited foster care. And of the
(02:58):
children who left the system, in it up being reunited
with their parents, are primary caretakers, were adopted, and eleven
percent were emancipated from their primary caregivers. And just for
a couple more stats to give you an idea of
the foster population, it's typically slightly more boys than girls
are in the foster system in the US as of
(03:20):
two thousand nine. Those are the most recent stats we've got. UH.
It's fifty three percent mail versus forty seven percent female.
And the median age of kids entering foster care is
nine point seven years, and the average child in a
foster situation will move through three placements. And seven percent
(03:41):
of those kids in foster care will stay in the
system for five and a half years, whereas at the
other end of the spectrum will stay in less than
one month. So there's such a wide range of situations.
But sadly, with a lot of the outcomes that we found,
there's there there are a out of bright spots. No,
(04:02):
and I want to talk about a little bit about
where um, most of these foster care uh, when most
of the foster children live. I didn't realize that it's
so concentrated. UM. But according to Children's Rights dot Org,
more than half of the children in foster care live
only in nine states, which are California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan,
(04:23):
New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Yeah. I didn't realize
that either. UM. And compensation for foster parenting is done
on a state by state basis, and I found it
interesting that California is one of those highly concentrated states
because they have one of the biggest state level problems
(04:45):
with not fairly compensating uh these foster caregivers. For instance, UM.
This was a study conducted by Children's Rights along with
the National Foster Parent Association and the University of Maryland
School of Social Work in two thousand seven, and for
a two year old in the foster system, the foster
(05:06):
parents would be reimbursed four d and twenty five dollars
per month. When they went in and actually calculated the
cost of living for or caregiving for that two year old,
the study found that they should be paying the state
should be paying them sixty percent more more at a
rate of six five dollars. And that will go up.
(05:27):
And that's just for a two year old. If you
take it in a sixteen year old, the cost of
living goes up even higher. And probably for that reason.
In two thousand nine, the California Court of Appeals ruled
that the state's money compensating foster parents is so low
that it violated federal child welfare law. Yeah, it was
illegal and insufficient. And according to The l A Times,
(05:50):
writing about this UM, the number of children placed with
families had plummeted as costs rose and fewer families were
willing to take in children. So not compensating family is
enough for the foster care they provide is directly affecting
how many families take in children. Right, And we should
say that this podcast is going to focus more on
the situation for the kids rather than how the any
(06:13):
kind of training or process that parents go into to
uh to take kids into their homes. UM. And I
guess before we go further, maybe we should talk a
little bit about how the foster care system in the
United States came about. Indeed, references to it go all
the way back to the Old Testament in the Talmud
were caring for dependent children was established as a duty
(06:36):
under the law, so it wasn't something that people never
thought about. Taking in children was was part of as
as was taking care of widows. Um. The English poor
law in the sixteenth century lead to more stringent regulation,
and in fifteen sixty two those laws allowed placement of
poor children into indentured service until they came of age,
(06:58):
which doesn't sound like a a precursor to the foster
care system, but but it is. Um the practice actually
followed Europeans to America and was the beginning of placing
children in homes. And then for a little historical fact,
in sixteen thirty six, Benjamin Eaton became the first foster
child on US soil, although I guess it was not
(07:19):
technically US soil obviously back then, but the first person,
you know, first kid in the region that was to
be known as, yes, the United States of America. But
it wasn't really until Charles Loring Brace in the eighteen
thirties that the foster movement in the United States really
took off. He was the founder of the Children's Aid Society,
(07:42):
and he came up with this idea of taking um,
I guess indigent children from the streets of New York
to move them to the Midwest and the West because
of the new train lines. And he was like, we
could take these kids from the city streets, get them
out to what we're called free foster homes in the Midwest,
(08:04):
and they could they could farm, they could be out
on a land and be in a much healthier environment,
right he Um. He definitely thought that raising a child
took more than just you know, paying for them to eat.
They needed gainful work. Um, they needed a supportive, wholesome
family environment. And so yeah, he advertised in the South
and West for families willing to take in children, and
(08:25):
this was really the beginning of UM institutional care. Um.
He he didn't want children to be stunted. But he
also thought that there was a bit of a poor
immigrant problem in New York as he saw it, and
definitely wanted to be part of not only supporting these
children to have better lives, but sort of cleaning up
the streets of New York. Um. Yeah, between eighteen fifty
(08:46):
three and nineteen twenty nine, more than one hundred and
fifty thousand abandoned, abused, and orphaned children were taken by
train from New York City and shipped to families on
farms across the country, both to to be farm hands,
to get out in nature or get off the streets.
And although these trains were referred to as orphan trains,
many weren't actually orphans but were actually surrendered by their families.
(09:09):
And while transporting these these kids across the country might
seem uh, pretty controversial by today's standards, this really was
a revolutionary option to orphan asylums and alms houses, which
were where those kids might end up otherwise and they
wouldn't be able to learn any kind of trade and
typically would not be treated very well. UM. And one
(09:32):
side note to the Children's Aid Society and the work
that Charles Loring Brace did UM. One of their projects
was starting up mother's meetings for poorer women in New
York City. UM and it was the forerunner to p
t A because these teachers would teach mothers basically how
to be better mothers. And this was taking place I
(09:54):
think they first started in eighteen sixty three. So not
only was h is braced trying to get kids off
the street, but also rehabilitate entire families, which is a
theme that is still um, you know, idealized in the
foster care system that we have in place today. But
um it's a it's a hard, um and challenging goal
(10:19):
to meet in reality, right And you could say that
it's a challenge because out of home placement is associated
with disruptions and attachment. And this is according to a
University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics analysis from two thousand.
They found that losses and lack of permanence undermine a
child's attempt to form a secure attachment with a primary caregiver.
(10:41):
So children who are you know, shuttled around from foster
care home to foster home, or even if they're simply
taken moved one time from their biological family to a
foster family. That upsets a child's stability, and even visits
with parents can be upsetting to young children and disruptive
to development if they are trying to um get used
(11:02):
to their foster family. And the longer than a child
stays in foster care, the less of the chance they
have of reuniting with birth parents and along with that,
you'll see often an increase in behavioral problems. Now, the
behavioral problems for kids in foster care, obviously are are
largely predicted by behavioral problems and abuse that they might
(11:24):
have suffered going into the foster system. But that issue
of stability is is such a big determinant of outcomes
for kids in this system. In a two thousand seven
m I T study, these abused children who were placed
in foster care were found to be far more likely
than other children to commit crimes, drop out of school,
(11:44):
join welfare, experienced substance abuse problems, or enter the homeless population.
And another study found that UM among the youth formerly
in foster care, the twelve month rate of panic disorder
was three times that of the general population, and along
with it, they had a seven times higher rate of
drug dependence, seven times high rate of bulimia, and twice
(12:07):
the rate of alcohol dependence. So you have all of
these negative behaviors going on and UM. There was one
study that was cited in a presentation from d Wilson,
whose executive director of the Northwest Institute for Children and Families,
and she references this study comparing maltreated kids moved from
(12:29):
their homes into some kind of foster situation to maltreated
kids who remain in their home and it possibly still
abusive home environment but there, but they're there. They're obviously
have case workers that are coming in and trying to
to manage the in home environment. And the kids who
are moved out of their homes actually failed worse behaviorally,
(12:50):
which underscores to these researchers just how important that home
relationship and the parental relationship really is to understand how
to service those children and getting them out of abusive
or neglectful environments while not robbing them of what the
obviously crucial role of a stable home environment is still
(13:13):
a giant puzzle for researchers. Yeah, and the recommendation out
of a part of a Casey National Alumni study, and
they refer to youth formerly in foster care as alumni.
One of the recommendations is to increase access to mental
health screening and treatment for youth in foster care and
those who have been adopted out or aged out, because
(13:35):
they just tend to have more of these problems that
we've talked about, a lot of it comes from that
disruption in the family life and the connections to their
family well and according to the National Survey of Child
and Adolescent Well Being UM, it seems that infants and
toddlers actually fair worst on developmental measures after eighteen months
in care. And that might be because the younger the population,
(13:59):
the foster population, the more vulnerable that they've been to
UM caregiver mistreatment before they are taken out of the home. Right.
There was one UM instance where what study was it
that we read where a guy was talking about how
he had gone through the system, but he it took
him years before he realized that his his last family,
(14:20):
his permanent family. They were not going to hurt him
or abuse him. But he had been exposed to so
many different homes where he had experienced abuse that he
was just he was used to it, and he expected
to be treated poorly by families who took him in UM.
And there's also some scholarship indicating the kinship care, as
in moving children out of maybe home with their parents
(14:44):
to a relative is more stable than foster care. And
again there it seems to be that that connection to
the family UM. But I'm sure it is a huge
problem for these case workers who obviously they want to
ensure the best treatment for the children. UM. But once
you break those ties, you know, what do you what
(15:06):
do you do? I'm sure it's it's it's difficult all around. Yeah,
And there's definitely an effort to maintain the family ties.
It's it's not a quick simple process to put a
child in the foster care system. According to the Child
Welfare Information Gateway, before a decision is made to remove
a child, child welfare staff must make reasonable efforts to
(15:27):
safely maintain children with their family and that could include
providing support services, having court intervention, and that court intervention
depends on the risk to the child, whether it's low
to moderate or no risk or or moderate too high.
And like I said, it's not a quick process. Claims
of abuse or neglect have to be investigated, and if
(15:48):
the child is at low to moderate risk, referrals may
be made to community based or volunteer in home child
welfare services. So definitely maintaining UM the family and then
from moderate to high risk children, family may be offered
in home services or may seek court intervention and the
court may eventually order removal. UH. And once children are placed,
(16:10):
we should mention that adoption does happen. UM foster parents
do have the ability to adopt foster kids. It used
to be before in the nineteen seventies it was discouraged
for fear of losing good foster families and this idea
that older kids are unadoptable. Which all of this reminds
(16:31):
me that we do have yet to do podcasts on adoption,
which we promised will get around two UM. But since
then the pathway for foster care adoption has been opened
up a lot more. And in two thousand two, for example,
twenty seven thousand, or fifty three percent of the fifty
(16:52):
three thousand children who are adopted directly from foster care
that year were adopted by their foster parents. There are
quite a lot of benefits to having a foster family
adopt their foster child. If it comes to that UM
foster parents have a greater knowledge of the child's experiences.
It provides more consistency for the child. The parents know
(17:12):
what to expect, you know, if the child has any
it has you know, previous issues, maybe coming from an
abusive family or having UM drug or alcohol dependence. And
they're familiar with the birth families. So if if the
child you know if their ties there, if the child
is trying to maintain ties or the family wants to
maintain ties, they're they're familiar with the family as well,
And this would be a a good time to to
(17:34):
mention biological children of foster parents, because that was one
question that I had, was, UM, how the foster system
affects you know, kids who are are born and raised
in those foster homes. And there actually has not been
that much research done on it, and there was there
was one outcome study that we did run across. It
(17:55):
was it was a pretty small sample of interviews with
kids who had, you know, the biological children who had
grown up UM with foster parents. And not surprisingly, there
are some pretty unique challenges that go along with that. UM.
For instance, they found that us some biological children resented
the foster children for having talking about their own family UM.
(18:17):
Some foster children resisted the emotional adoption into the foster family,
which could cause tension with the biological kids, and some
biological children noted strong feelings of being less important to
their parents because their needs were perceived to be less
great and and they they even included this this diagram
(18:37):
of sort of a hierarchy that can sometimes just naturally
evolve within foster families between the needs of biological children
versus the foster children, and how parents can um you know,
service all of those things while maintaining healthy relations between
all of the kids, right, And it depends on how
(18:58):
long the foster child is with the family UM as
far as how close they get with all the members
of the family. And some children reported in this study
they interviewed, they talked to four adults and five children
like still children biological children UM and some reported that
while the foster child was taken in, he or she
did not become part of the nucleus of the family.
(19:20):
And there were several reasons given, some of those being
maybe the family is burned out. The kids are feeling
burned out from from caring taking in someone and caring
for them, And some parents operate this way to protect
the biological children and to compensate for all the time
and focus on the foster children. So some families might
just be trying so hard to balance you know, here
are biological children, but we've also promised to take care
(19:41):
of this other child. But it seems like for for
foster kids in particular, the biggest risk factor is that
issue of aging out of the system. This is happening
to roughly two kids every year who are in the
US who are turning eighteen, and uh, they don't really
have anywhere to turn. A lot of them might end
(20:02):
up in a homeless shelter on their eighteenth birthday because
of that. Yeah. Um, going back to Children's Rights dot Org,
they talked about children aging out of the system without
a permanent family, and like Kristen just said, twelve to
thirty percent struggled with homelessness after they aged out. And
this is looking at several different studies, which is why
the range of percentages is there. Um, forty six did
(20:27):
not complete high school and twenty five to fifty five
were found to be unemployed. And one thing that I found,
um interesting is the high rate of young women who
ended up pregnant within twelve to eighteen months of leaving
foster care, which is such a short a short time.
And also, uh, not surprisingly, fifty percent experienced extreme financial hardship. Yeah,
(20:49):
if you don't have anyone supporting you, I mean, it
would be hard to get through college and then finding
a job afterwards. So we have painted a pretty dire
picture of foster care in the US UM on a
more positive note. To to end things maybe on an upswing.
The government has tried to address some of these problems
(21:13):
UM in recent years. The Pew Commission on Children in
Foster Care, sponsored by the Putitable Trust, underwent a two
thousand four year long intensive study of the foster care
system in the US, and as a result of the
recommendations that they made UM from that research, in October
(21:36):
two thousand eight, Fostering Connections to Success and an Increasing
Adoptions Act was passed unanimously by Congress and signed into
law by President Bush and UM. That piece of legislation
was the most comprehensive foster care revision that the Congress
had made in decades. Um and An authorized federal resources
(21:58):
to allow more children to leave foster care for safe,
permanent homes with family members, and it also allowed for
provisions to support the adoption of children from foster care,
especially older youth and those with special needs. And then finally,
it paved the way for tribal governments to be able
to receive foster care funds directly from the federal government,
(22:18):
thus ensuring that more American, Indian, and Alaskan Native children
can remain with their own communities, because that has been
a huge problem of Native American children being plucked from
their tribal communities and sent away to private group homes. Right, So,
I want to hear from our listeners who have been
involved in the system. Do we have any social workers
(22:39):
out there who can comment on some of these statistics.
Do we have people who have been through the system themselves,
or how about foster families out there, right, because like
we said, we're really talking about and focusing on the
situation for the kids. Um, So foster parents out there.
I mean, I can't imagine that it is an easy
job and it's certainly does not come with um huge
(23:03):
financial reward um. So, so please anyone involved who can
give us some insight because we've been going through a
lot of statistics and a lot of studies, a lot
of which you're predistressing. It's pretty grim, I've got to say.
But let us know your thoughts. As always, mom stuff
at Discovery dot com is where you can send your thoughts,
(23:23):
or you can always head over to Facebook and leave
us a comment up there, or you can tweet us
if you are very succinct at Mom's Stuff podcast. We
got a couple of letters right now to read. Okay,
this is from Christie. The subday line is why I exercise,
(23:45):
And now I still really want to know why people
exercise because I need some sort of motivation. Anyway, she says,
just finish your episode about exercise. I have two reasons
why I get up at three thirty am to juice
and then go running up down my three and a
half fear old daughter and my ten month old son.
Not only does it give me the energy to make
it through the day, including bath and bedtime, but I'm
(24:06):
setting a good example for them both, particularly my daughter.
It paid off a couple of weeks ago when we
ordered some new shoes for Lily. When they arrived and
she put them on, she ran around exclaiming, I have
mommy writting shoes. When I am still so amazed by
the fact that she makes up at three thirty in
the morning. That's the middle of the night. If I
roll over at three thirty in the morning and I
look at the clock, I'm like, oh, thank god, it's
(24:29):
so much time to sleep. And she's a mother. Yeah,
good for her. She's exercise thing does give you more
energy to make it to the day, but I need
the energy to exercise first, right exactly, and the morning
exercises is a big hurdle for me. Well, I've got
one here from Justine about our episode on Martha Stewart,
and she says, I just had to write in about
(24:49):
Martha Stewart to stay hecky. Yes, she is an excellent
role model. She is just as much of a feminist
as Hillary Clinton. The same right to equal opportunity that
allows a woman to be a world political leader or marine, says,
she can also choose to pour her heart into cooking, cleaning, crafting,
and entertaining or anything else she likes. The freedom is
(25:10):
in the choosing. Does Martha sometimes go a bit crazy? Yes,
her legions of adoring fans will tell you that that's
what lifts her from entertaining to sublime. She certainly doesn't
do this work to please a man or fit a mole,
and it seems to me that she does it for
the sake of making a wonderful life for herself and
those she loves. And what is more admirable than that. Indeed, Justine,
(25:33):
so again, if you've got anything to send our way,
you can email us mom Stuff at Discovery dot com.
You can find us on Facebook, and you can follow
us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. Of course, you
can check out the blog during the week. It's stuff
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Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
(25:55):
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