That’s because the foster care system is not set up to support connections or create any sense of permanency. Instead, the most trusted adults become temporary. Friendships, along with foster placements, end. The expedient solution, which often involves moving a child, wins out over one that would allow for the best outcome in the long term but that would require the time and attention that no one seems to have.
As an attorney who has represented hundreds of foster children in court over three decades, I know firsthand how many people will pass through their lives — judges, caseworkers and other child welfare officials — without even asking them what they want or need. I also know what the No. 1 answer would be for many of the 390,000-plus children in foster care across the United States: a relationship that lasts.
Without that sense of connection, and the emotional support that comes with it, studies show that the already fraught transition to adulthood is made even worse for foster kids. In other words, enduring relationships matter. Those relationships can help improve high school graduation rates and reduce teen pregnancy. They can provide accountability and create opportunity.
It’s that simple, and that difficult. A top-heavy system that gives priority to the people who work in it, or to the foster parents and blood relatives who participate in it, is naturally going to treat the children almost as an afterthought. If we want to change the children’s chances for success, first we’ve got to change the way they’re viewed.
Imagine if the foster care system were set up along the lines of a children’s hospital: warm, welcoming, entirely centered on the comfort and well-being of its young charges. Of course, the adults are looked after too, but they are not the point of this well designed, multidisciplinary project. The kids come first. They are made to feel safe, secure and, yes, loved. Every step of the way, they are given hope.
I’m not suggesting that child welfare agencies paint their offices in pastels and provide every “patient” with balloon animals and coloring books upon arrival, though that would be nice. I am saying that they need to start centering the children and stop pushing paperwork and policies that don’t benefit anyone. Decades of the same conversation is enough.
Part of the problem is that the kids in the system are invisible; unlike a children’s hospital, foster care can’t create ads showcasing adorable young people in distress. The public can’t know much, if anything, about them, because of privacy laws (that mostly benefit the institutions and adults, if you ask me). A secret system is an unaccountable one. When no one person is responsible for a child throughout their time in the system, no one can be blamed when things go bad. And they do.
Tens of thousands of children have gone missing in foster care, many of them repeat runaways, some of them never located again. Although most foster parents are good people doing God’s work under tough conditions, we’ve all read the horrifying stories of foster children found starved, tortured or murdered. One first-of-its-kind study also found that foster children are 42 percent more likely to die than children in the general population, irrespective of age or race, further underscoring their social and medical vulnerability.
It’s supposed to be child protective services, but clearly too often it is not.
I wish there was a formula for an easy fix. Money alone isn’t the answer, unless it’s accompanied by actual, real-time attention to the children and their need for connection. And by accountability, of course. The foster care system too often reminds me of the assembly line I worked on while I was in high school. My job was to snap two small pieces together, and I never concerned myself with whether the resulting light fixture did or didn’t work.
Foster care should be the opposite of that experience. Perhaps a team of two caseworkers should be assigned to children at the start and stick with them for however long they’re in the system, whether it’s a week or an entire childhood. Assign caseworkers no more than, say, a couple dozen families. Pay them well and let them focus on real, one-on-one social work, instead of pushing paper or inputting data. That’s relationship No. 1. That way they’ll know their kids and who in their lives matter, and they can help them maintain family ties and friendships. Those are relationships No. 2 and 3. Maybe make sure they stick with a school counselor with whom they’re clicking: relationship No. 4.
Each one of those relationships will help kids unlucky enough to land in foster care feel like their luck might be turning around, so that they’re not stuck in a troubled past but connected to people who can look forward for them and with them.
Shari F. Shink is the founder of the Rocky Mountain Children’s Law Center and executive director of Cobbled Streets, which is focused on changing the lives of foster and homeless children.
Governing’s opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing’s editors or management.
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