Approximately 800,000 children end up in a foster care home in America each year. Foster care is designed to help orphaned, abandoned and abused children find homes where they are safe and can receive proper care until a more stable home environment can be found for them. The problem is that the American foster care system is loosely organized and makes living situations hard on the kids involved by not meeting their individual needs fully.

* Who is eligible for foster care?

Foster care is given to any child between the ages of birth and 18 years old. Children are usually placed in a foster home for an average of three years. After that, a child will typically be reunited with his biological family or become permanently adopted by another family. However, some children remain in a foster care situation longer than this time frame.

* How do young children fare in a foster situation?

Statistics show that young children placed in foster care often have some level of emotional and behavioral problems. They are removed from their homes because of neglect or physical, sexual or verbal abuse. They carry those memories with them for a long time. It may make many children timid around other people or just the opposite; make them direct anger at the families who take them in under the foster care program. Many of these children require mental health services and often have physical disabilities due to poor health.

Children in a foster care program do not do as well on average as their counterparts in school. They have lower grades and perform much worse on standardized tests. Some children become bitter and find themselves in trouble a lot of the time, even to the point of expulsion. This is not only hard on the child, but the family providing care for him.

* What happens to kids who “age out” of foster care?

Children who “age out” of foster care, become too old for the program, may find themselves in a troublesome predicament. While some agencies and previous foster families may help these teenagers transition into adulthood, it is often difficult for the teens to find work and afford another place to live. Sadly, many end up homeless.

Statistics show that children who age out rarely have anyone to turn to for advice or guidance once they reach the maximum foster care age of 18. There are mentoring programs available to help, but these children may not know where to find such outreach programs. Many of these teens become parents themselves at an early age, and only about 46 percent of them actually graduate from high school.

* What about the foster care family?

In almost half of all cases; 46 percent of the time, a child is placed in a foster care home with strangers. This may happen multiple times over the course of the child’s participation in the foster care system. Some will be able to live with relatives, and still others may be placed in a foster home that houses a group of foster children under one roof. A foster family is given a small monthly stipend to provide for the foster child, but this is often not enough, especially if a child requires counseling of any sort.

It all seems bleak for the children who are forced into a foster care situation. The purpose of the program is to give these children a loving and nurturing environment to get them through some pretty rough times, but is the system failing these children? Is there a way to make the system work better for these children? This topic is under thorough and continuous investigation. More and more Americans realize that something must change in the foster care system across our nation. Increased awareness in the problems faced by the foster care system is the driving force behind these needed changes. Only the future will tell if we have hit the mark.

Iuculanos website is http://www.margaretlano.com and http://www.angelsforfosterkids.org

Article Author: Margaret_Iuculano
Article Source: Ezine Articles.com: Foster Care in America – How it Affects Children

I stopped at my Mom’s this morning.  As usual she had a lot of suitcases for me; I left with over a dozen of them.  Ever since she heard about this organization, Suitcases 4 Kids, she has made it one of her missions to collect as many as she can find.  I pick up 4 or 5 whenever I stop in.  Today was the mother lode!

Why does she have so much interest?  The organization’s goal is to supply suitcases for the 510,000 children that are in the foster care system in the United States.  These are the kids who are constantly on the move from hospital, to foster home, to group home, and hopefully to a family that keeps them.  And they move with all of their belongings stuffed into garbage bags. This is their life.  Suitcases help to boost their self esteem; they are not throw away kids!

Mom finds it amazing that there are so many children like this; and this number doesn’t include those that are homeless.  In her day these kids would have been absorbed into their families  She herself had several cousins that grew up with her when their parents could not take care of them anymore.  As a result I also had cousins living with us when I was growing up.

There was a time when families could do this.  Hillary Clinton once said that “it takes a village to raise a child”.  In those days  people could take care of their own.  Grandparents, parents, and children lived in the same home.  Uncles, aunts, and cousins lived next door and down the street.  Today no one lives close.  I have two friends that live in Massachusetts but each has family in California; a lot of my wife’s relatives are in Canada.

So where do these children go?  To state facilities; as more and more families break apart more buildings spring up to take care of them.  Just today Mom was telling me that her town is trying to build a small mental hospital just a couple of doors from her house.  The neighbors are up in arms about this and they are trying to fight it.  So again, where will these kids go?

The interesting thing is that this hospital will replace several Section 8 houses that no one even knew were there until now.  These are government-sponsored affordable homes for low-income families and individuals.  The neighbors are using horror stories that they’ve heard about these homes to try to stifle the hospital.  They are fighting to keep these places even though they hate what they’ve heard.  As I said to my mother, “they want to keep the devil they know rather than the devil they don’t.”  I don’t know who originally said this but it really fits here.  But don’t get me wrong I am not saying I believe the hospital is bad; the neighbors are afraid their property values will go down.  Apparently this is more important than our kids!

On a side note, Eunice Kennedy Shriver just died.  Today the Kennedys are having a public wake on Cape Cod today.  No matter what people’s personal or political thoughts are about them no one can deny that the Kennedys have done a lot for the disabled, homeless, and other disadvantaged people.  For example, Eunice started Special Olympics in her back yard.  Maria Shriver, besides being the First Lady of California works with Alzheimer’s.  Caroline Kennedy works with the homeless.  Ted Kennedy has sponsored many bills to help the disabled.

And now we have this small foundation, Suitcases 4 Kids who is looking to help foster care children as much as possible.  They would like new or lightly used suitcases, backpacks, and duffel bags.  Every day in her travels my Mom keeps looking.

If you have any please don’t hesitate to help these kids out.  The website gives locations where to send them.  Mom has it easy, she finds them and loads them into my car, and then lets me worry about how to get them to the foundation.

Our organization was formed to provide suitcases to kids who are moving through the foster care system. On average each child moves 3 to 4 times but I have met a few that have gone through 14 to 20 different homes, group programs, and hospitals. These kids only have trash bags with which to carry their belongings.

“We want to make this project special for the children. The message we hope to send is ‘You are important. You are valuable.’ We believe that the love, care, and commitment from this Haverhill area project will light a fire of inspiration and spread Suitcases for Kids across Massachusetts and beyond.” said Donna White, co-chairwoman of Suitcases for Kids, and a mother of two.

There are 700 children in the Haverhill system. Our goal was to bring in 1000 suitcases to make sure we covered all of them.

I have been involved with the program almost since its inception a few weeks ago. My primary duties have been to develop and maintain its website. I also do some of the research. It is our awesome team that gets the word out about the kids and the need for suitcases.

I mentioned the drive for suitcases to my 8 year old son. He is a hoarder from way back. He still has his first pair of shoes. Like his dad he has never found a book that he doesn’t like to squirrel away. To even suggest getting rid of something will cause him to run kicking and screaming from the room…just like his dad.

But today was different. Just the mention of foster care kids and suitcases had him scrambling for whatever he could find. You see, several of these kids are his friends and the idea of them being without was enough for to get him moving. In the end he came up with a suitcase, a backpack, and a duffel bag.

He didn’t just hand me his finds; he insisted that I drive him to one of the drop off sites so that he could contribute. He chose the Triton High School location in Byfield Massachusetts hoping that he could spend some time with the co-chairman Ron Nickerson’s boys. And yes they were there but when he saw all the suitcases and the work that needed to be done he pitched right in. And rather than stand around and wait until he was done, dad joined in too.

There were many wonderful people working along side of us inspecting, cleaning, and stacking the donations. At the end of the day there were still more waiting to be processed. At our location we filled one trailer to overflowing. Luckily we had a truck in reserve which took not only the extras but also the unfinished ones and the trash.

By Sunday we realized we had received over 1300 suitcases, backpacks, and duffel bags and more are still coming in. The response from the community has been overwhelming. I can understand it seeing how my son, the hoarder, reacted.

But we aren’t finished. Yes, there is still the job of distributing the suitcases to the Haverhill DSS area, but there is also the state of Massachusetts, New England, the East Coast, and, and, and…. With everyone’s help we can provide suitcases to all the foster care kids in the United States.

And when my son and I went home I was ready for a nap but that didn’t happen. For the rest of the day he worked on his bedroom either throwing away or giving away most of the stuff he had piled up in there. He now has a bedroom and closet!!

When you give from the heart wonderful things can happen.

I was 7 years old the first time I went into a program. I was scared. The staff told me to go into my room and put my stuff away. All my stuff was in trash bags, someone must have thought it was trash and one of the bags that had my toys in it got lost. I was only there for a short time, but it seemed like it was forever. The things that I remember most was that al the windows had locks on them and were covered with hard plastic and there was no privacy.

I used to wet my bed and the first night I was so scared that I was afraid to use the bathroom. The next morning when they woke us up the staff walked in the bedroom I sharing with three other kids and announced to the entire unit that “CJ pissed his bed and he needs to take a shower”. I hated him. Looking back I spent most of my time sitting in a chair facing the wall. I was determined not to let them see me cry.

I left there and went to my next foster home, again in trash bags this time they were the heavy green ones. I was careful this time not to pack all my toys in one bag. The home was okay but DSS moved me again after only a few months. They had already thrown all my stuff into the cheap white kitchen trash bags. The pictures of my real family were just thrown in and some of them were torn or bent. After leaving this home DSS sent me to a hospital because they said I had “anger problems.” I tried to fight it by throwing rocks at the DSS workers car but that just brought the police and an ambulance. I was 8.

While I was at the hospital they put me on meds to “help control my anger” I hated the meds, they made me slow and I gained a lot of weight. After leaving the hospital I was sent to a program. I was there for about a year. They said I was better and they sent me to another foster home in trash bags.

The next two years was spent going from home to home with a few hospitals thrown in. Each time I left in trash bags, I became grateful when the family that was getting rid of me gave me the heavy green trash bags. During those 2 years I think moved 8 times, I was 10 years old.

The next home was a home that was good they were able to put up with me and all the bad behaviors that I had. I was there for 3 years when they gave up. This sucked the most as I was just beginning to trust them. I don’t know how many times I have actually moved but it’s been a lot. I am in a new home now and I really want it to work.