Megan 1 Johnson English 106 April 7, 2008
Child Abuse in Foster Homes
According to The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, there are over 500,000 children living in foster homes every year (64). The American Academy o f Child and Adolescent Psychiatry also states, "Unfortunately, there has been a decrease in the number of foster parents available to care for children over the past 10 years" (64). "FACED with a growing shortage of foster homes, the State Department of Children and Youth Services has started sending teams of social workers into communities to recruit foster parents," was the shocking statement made in The New York Times. [A foster home] serves children who have experienced abuse or neglect from their birthparents, families, and their foster parents. (Foster Care V). In Alabama a child is reported to be abused every twenty minutes according to the Alabama Council on Child Abuse. With all of those abuses every twenty minutes the main cause pinpointed by the The Alabama Department of Human Resources seems to be that most parents who abuse their child were abused in their childhood (www.youtube.com). A foster home's purpose is to protect children from the neglect that they felt or the abuse that they went through. Sometimes, this is not the case. There have been numerous accounts of the foster parents abusing the children equally or if not worse than the children's biological parents. Foster parents should be required to take a year of classes to prepare them to deal with children who come into the foster home. The foster parents need to learn how to discipline and cope with abused children
2 before they are allowed to have these kinds of children placed in their fostering homes. According to Foster Care Today, "Children in foster care are at high risk for emotional, behavioral, developmental, and physical health problems" (6). These children come out of their homes because of abuse, and some get placed into a foster home where they are being abused again. In a recent interview with a woman who was a foster parent for 20 stressful years to over 15 children, mostly boys said, "Being a foster parent is a lot of hard work, and sometimes it gets stressful, but abuse never crossed my mind in these hard times." When asked why she wanted to become a foster parent, her answer was what one would hope every foster parent would say. Her heart-warming reply was, "I wanted to become a foster parent because I wanted to help children who weren't getting the help, love, and attention that they needed." This was a very important comment that she made, because that is the kind of attention that these children need when they come out of previous abusive homes. She also said that she has four biological children of her own, but she does not treat her foster children any different than she treats her biological children. During the interview she was asked if her biological children got jealous of the attention the foster children were receiving. She responded, "Sometimes I think my own kids got jealous of the time that I was spending with some of the foster kids, but I tried to give everyone my attention." This woman is no longer a foster parent anymore because she said after many years of fostering children you just get burnt out. With saying that she added, "There is a lot of stress. Also, a lot of these kids had been abused badly by their parents...and I began to take a lot of it to heart. I hated seeing them in so much pain.. and that really begins to wear on you." This woman is the perfect example of showing you that there is no reason why any child in the foster system should be getting abused. If the foster parent is stressed they need to find a way to release that instead of taking it out on their foster child like this woman did.
3 Every year, thousands of children are being abused and there is an abundant of news headlines that convey these messages to people. A percentage of these abuse cases happen within the foster care system. One case of abuse in foster homes happened to a little boy named Marcus Fiesel. The Enquirer, of Cincinnati, reported on this case describing the boy with these words, "Elfish grin. Ocean-blue eyes. A carpet of shiny brown hair framing his face." This little boy grew up in a flea-infested home. This was not the worst thing that happened in the case. When Marcus's mother called the police for domestic violence purposes, The Enquirer states the following about the police, "they found severe bruising on Marcus' left buttock." Approaching his third birthday, Marcus was placed in a foster home with Liz and David Carroll Jr. The foster agencies that placed Marcus in this foster home thought he was in a safe environment, but little did they know this was not any more of a safe household then with his birthparents. The first week in August, Marcus's foster parents wrapped him up in a blanket and shoved him in a closet while they went to a family reunion. Printed in The Enquirer at the time of the incident was this sad description made about three-year old Marcus, "Left alone in the closet over two days, Marcus' cries turned to whimpers, his breathing grew shallow, he closed his eyes and finally died, authorities say." This is just one of the many cases that are reported every year. Twelve abuse cases in the foster care system happened in January of 2003 in Illinois. Stated in The New York Times, "the police found a 3-year-old boy chained by the neck to a bed in a foster home where they also found cocaine, cannabis and unregistered firearms. This is very sad, and things like this should not happen to any child. Another headline the previous day from The New York Times reported that, "the police found six youngsters -- all former wards of the state -locked in an unheated with basement no food or toilet and only a quilt and a few pillows to cover the concrete floor." These problems arise because of the lack of foster care agencies. The New
4 York Times confirmed this fact by stating, "[There are only] 100 small private agencies to handle about 70 percent of its casework..." Patrick T. Murphey, from Cook County, Illinois, made a comment about this saying, "''Child welfare today is basically run the same way it was run in the 1890's,'' he said. ''They try to do too much and as a result, they end up doing too little.'" The last of these cases according to The New York Times was when, "the police found two 10-year-old boys, two 8-year-old girls and two 6-year-old boys in a basement on the Northwest Side. Officer Donegan said there was neither a bed nor an escape route for emergencies, and that the children all wore pull-up diapers in case their parents did not respond quickly enough to their bathroom requests." The police also informed the newspaper that, "The children are only allowed out of the basement to go to school and occasionally play outside in the summer." All of these cases share one thing in common, and that is all of these cases happened within the foster care system. Six adults were arrested in these cases and twelve children were taken to emergency shelters. This is very sad, because I am sure none of these children knew that this would be the outcome of them being placed in that particular foster home. Not all children in foster homes end up getting abused. In a recent interview with a guy I went to preschool with I learned that there is another side to children in foster homes. He was placed in a foster home at the age of four, because his dad was an alcoholic and abused him. Unlike some children who come from an abusive home and sometimes end up in an abusive foster home, this was not the case for him. He was placed in a foster home with a husband and wife with two biological children of their own. He stated. "I loved being there....they treated me so well. I got along very good with my 2 brothers." When asked if his foster parents treated him any different than his brothers he said," No, at first I think they treated me better, just because they wanted me to feel at home and safe." In abusive foster homes, they usually treat their foster
5 children different than their biological children by abusing them. Their reasons for abusing them is simply because they are not their real children. When being a foster parent you have to know how to discipline your child the right way so the child does not think you are hitting him/her. "No, they never abused me to my knowledge. I mean they might have spanked me when I was in trouble, but no they never abused me." In his case, the spanked him, but made it known it was because he was in trouble, not that they were doing it to hurt him. His situation is the perfect example of how a foster child should feel in a foster home. In my proposal argument I chose to cover child abuse in foster homes simply because I do not think this subject is being advertised. The key to fixing this kind of problem would be to start awareness campaigns throughout schools and churches. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, "African-American children make up approximately two thirds of the foster care population and remain in care longer" (64). Because of this fact, more time would be spent campaigning in large cities where there is a more diverse population. While the children are waiting to be placed in new foster homes, they will be placed in group homes. These homes will be funded by the state in which it resides in, and will house children up to 17 years of age. My solution to omit or decrease the child abuse in foster homes is to run a strict background check on each family trying to foster a child along with making the foster parents take a year of classes to prepare them to deal with children who come into their home. Placement agencies run these background checks now, but I do not believe that their background checks are very strict since there are so many cases of abuse today. Not only do they have to have background checks and take classes, all families wanting to foster a child should have to meet with this child for two months everyday, prior to the child moving into the home. I believe
6 this would show the commitment and the seriousness of the parent wanting to foster that child. Not only would they have to make these daily visits before the child moves in, but a socialservice worker would be assigned to the home with unannounced weekly check-ups. These social-service workers would also complete a full examination of the child's physical appearance and emotional behaviors. The classes that the foster parents would have to take would be funded by the Child Welfare programs, and be held at the local agencies where the foster parents are receiving their child from. These classes will be taught by a social-service worker and will teach the foster parents how to discipline the foster child correctly. These classes would be very effective, because the foster parent will learn parental techniques to use on their foster child. I believe all of these solutions will decrease the number of child abuse cases within foster homes. Abuse is defined as " improper or excessive use or treatment," according to Webster dictionary. Children who are being placed in foster homes are expecting these homes to be safer than the homes that they came out of. Every child should experience a foster home like the guy in the interview did. They should feel safe and at home when being placed in their selected foster home. With stronger and stricter rules and regulations the foster care system can be a safer place for battered and abused children.