It was previously shared by my amazing Upworthy colleague Laura Willard. Just a small glimpse of the life of children in foster care after they were removed from their homes, was what we saw. This was Zoe, a little girl, and Benaiah, her little brother.
As foster parents for the last year, my wife and I shared the original with our adoption worker. She then passed it on to all agency staff. It exploded like wildfire among them.
(Yes, it’s a bit long at around 20 minutes. It’s well worth the effort.
She describes her life as a cycle, interrupted by a tornado. She is a foster parent. I don’t think I have to add anything.
So … let’s accompany that with 9 uncomfortable — but enlightening — facts below. These are the only nine facts highlighted, but there are many more facts within those headers.
Some of these children are still waiting to be adopted. Some will return to their parents. Some others will grow older or even run away.
And PTSD can mimic a lot of other mental illnesses, and it can manifest as nightmares, flashbacks, fight-or-flee responses, anger outbursts, and hyper-vigilance (being on “red alert” at all times), among other symptoms.
They are at the edge, but it could be that their childhood was very difficult. Trauma does that.
88% of all foster kids live in institutions, 66% in group homes, and 4% in pre-adoptive families. Read that again — only 4% are in pre-adoptive homes.
That’s eight homes that they move into — and out of. You should also consider that this means they not only lose their children and friends with whom they form a bond, but also their schoolmates, friends, and pets.
Over 8% remain in foster care for longer than five years. The 238,000 foster children who left the system in 2013 comprised approximately half the total. 21% of them were adopted. 15% went to live at home with a relative. 10% were emancipated.
If you add all that together, every year hundreds of thousands will have left the system. How does this look? “You’re 18. You’ve got no place to live and no family. Good luck — but-bye now!” One-quarter of former foster kids experience homelessness within four years of exiting the system.
They are four-five times more likely to be hospitalized for attempting suicide
and five-eight times more likely to be hospitalized for serious psychiatric disorders in their teens.Based on that set of statistics alone, it’s in the public’s interest (ignoring, for a second, the interests of those kids) to help them through their lot in life and spend resources making it all work much better for everybody before it gets to that point. Do you get it?
What’s one of the biggest risk factors in families whose children are placed in foster care?
Is it cruelty?
Cruelty?
Do you use drugs?
Sexual abuse
Neglect?
The answer is …
Together with homelessness and unemployment, it’s a main contributing factor. It happens all the time. The fact that it’s far easier for a parent to be accused and investigated for neglect or abuse because of simple things like lack of access to a vehicle, or a working refrigerator, or the ability to get a kid to a doctor’s appointment — that has a lot to do with this. Tie that to the link between drug abuse and poverty and between poverty and child abuse … well, you can see where this is going.
And in a country where one-third of children are living in poverty (hint: the good ol’ U.S. of A. Imagine how this affects the number of children being taken away and placed in foster care.
Before they moved in with us, my kids had to go through something similar to the ones shown above. We’ve been through the wringer in ways that we’re going to have to talk about one day because it’s not just that the kids have been challenging — they have — it’s that the system itself has been more challenging.
The entire system — from agencies to government entities to social workers to even the schools — seems like it’s designed to fail these kids and the families who are attempting to help. It’s almost designed
not to work. It was there, I said it.For us, we are only a few weeks away from becoming the legal parents of these kids. We’re very happy to be here making it happen. They seem to love being our kids. We fell in love with them along the way and can’t imagine our lives without them.
To be honest, if we had known how difficult this journey would be, and if there was a way to turn back time and not do it, would we have continued with the journey?
I’m sorry. I won’t be entirely honest. Let you make the decision.