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  • Essay / Impact of the Foster Care System on Children

    In 2015, Judge Janis Graham Jack called Texas' foster care system broken and unconstitutional and wrote that "those who are labeled as permanent wards of the state "almost uniformly leave the state guard more damaged than when they entered." After she said this, many news outlets picked it up and wrote about how the system works and how it is failing children. Before this, many people probably didn't even think about the reality of a child in foster care and many people probably still don't. When we think of children in foster care, they are often seen as problematic, aggressive, and sometimes even delinquent children. The definition of a child in foster care is "a child without parental support or protection, placed with a person or family for care, usually by local social services or on decision of a court”. If children in foster care are just that, why are they considered inherently bad children? Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay According to Dictonary.com, foster care is defined as “the education or supervision of children in foster care, as orphans or delinquents, in an institution, group home, or private home, usually arranged through a government or social service agency that pays expenses. Generally, foster care is meant to be a temporary arrangement until the child can be placed with his or her family, if possible, or with an adoptive family. While a child is in care, they are expected to have a safe environment in which to live, have access to counseling, be allowed to participate in extracurricular activities, be provided with hygiene items and basic clothing, among other things. In short, children in foster care are supposed to receive everything that any “normal” child could have given them. Children are removed from their homes and placed in foster care for a multitude of reasons ranging from abuse and neglect to having parents with drug addictions. Once removed, they are sometimes placed in homes where they are abused and neglected despite the protections supposedly in place to prevent this. In reality, the state isn't really concerned about whether children in foster care experience abuse while in protective custody. In an article written about the failures of Texas' foster care system, Cameron Langford wrote: "But Clement said Jack rightly found that Texas was deliberately indifferent to the risk of physical and sexual abuse for foster children in approved host families…”. Many, if not all, foster children have experienced some sort of traumatic event and never learned to cope with that trauma due to lack of resources. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, mental and behavioral health constitutes “the greatest unmet health need of children and adolescents in foster care.” while up to 80% of children in foster care have significant mental health problems, compared to only about 20% of the general population. The harsh reality is that fixing this broken system is not a priority for those in power. A lot of this I don't need to research, because it was and has been my life for years. On September 30, 2013, I was removed from my parents' custody.