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FOSTER CARE FINDING A PERMANENT SOLUTION: youth in the United Statesare doing better ["Report on children has some good news"]. There is onesub-group of teens who are doing far worse than they have done in previousyears. That sub-group is
FOSTER CARE FINDING A PERMANENT SOLUTION
August 7, 2007 12:35 am http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2...8072007/301218 ON JULY 13, the Free Lance-Star ran an article about how the youth in the United States are doing better ["Report on children has some good news"]. There is one sub-group of teens who are doing far worse than they have done in previous years. That sub-group is children in foster care. The average time a child spends in foster care is three years. The average number of foster homes a child lives in is six. That means that a child in foster care moves, on average, every six months. They usually don't finish an entire year in one school. They develop emotional issues, not only because of the abuse and neglect from their biological families, but because of the abuse and neglect from a system which doesn't provide them the security that every child needs. In Virginia, 21 percent of children who leave foster care are doing so because they are turning 18 and aging out of foster care. The national average is only 5 percent. Virginia rates the highest in the nation. What happens to those youth who age out with no family ties? The statistics do not look good. Many drop out of high school, become incarcerated, homeless, pregnant, and abuse drugs and alcohol. Why are there so many youth in Virginia aging out and leaving foster care without a family? One answer is because in Virginia, one authorized "goal" for the child can be Permanent Foster Care. The Adoption and Safe Families Act, signed into law by former President Clinton, states that if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the previous 22 months, the state must initiate a "goal of permanency" for that child. Viable goals, according to the ASFA, a return to parents, guardianship by family members, or adoption. The intent of the law is to stop children from languishing in foster care. Virginia circumvented the law by making Permanent Foster Care a "permanency goal." In Virginia, the Department of Social Services can be involved with a family from before the time a child is born, offer services to the family, remove the child from the family after the parents are not able to stop abusing or neglecting the child, place the child into foster care for a year, return the child to the parents after they showed minimum standards of parenting, remove the child after another year of neglecting and abusing the child, and offer more services to the parents. When it becomes evident to DSS and the judge that the parents are never going to be able to provide minimum standard of care to the child, DSS can then sentence the child to permanent foster care, where the child will spend the rest of his childhood. The child will then age out, without a permanent, legal family. According to one social worker supervisor in one local DSS office, "There is no such thing as "permanent" in Permanent Foster Care." Then why is this a viable goal? In Virginia, a teenager can request to be adopted by his foster family; the foster family could request to adopt the teenager; a ban on visits from biological family members could be in place; and yet DSS could still choose the option of not terminating parental rights so the teenager could be adopted into a loving, permanent family. Also, the judge has the option of only "recommending that the department change the child's goal to adoption" instead of ordering DSS to pursue adoption as the goal. Foster children have no voice. Virginia's First Lady, Anne Holton, has recently developed an initiative called "4 Keeps." Her goal is to help ensure that all of Virginia's young people have permanent, stable family connections and the community support to sustain them. Virginia needs to comply with the intent of ASFA and no longer allow Permanent Foster Care to be a goal for the children in foster care. All children in foster care deserve to have a goal which will truly allow them to have permanence in their lives. According to this federal law, the only goals that should be available to a child in foster care a return to parents or a family member; adoption; or guardianship. There is no reason children in foster care should have to grow up not knowing where they will live from one day to the next. They should know that they have a permanent, legal family, and the peace of mind that comes with knowing they have legal parents. The Department of Social Services should not be the legal guardians for a young person's entire childhood. The citizens of Virginia owe this to the children in foster care. Karen Dickerson is a resident of Spotsylvania and the mother of eight children. Copyright 2007 The Free Lance-Star Publishing Company. CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CIVIL RIGHTS ON A DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NSA / CIA WIRETAPPING PROGRAM.... CPS Does not protect children... It is sickening how many children are subject to abuse, neglect and even killed at the hands of Child Protective Services. every parent should read this .pdf from connecticut dcf watch... http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com/8x11.pdf http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the US These numbers come from The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect in Washington. (NCCAN) Recent numbers have increased significantly for CPS *Perpetrators of Maltreatment* Physical Abuse CPS 160, Parents 59 Sexual Abuse CPS 112, Parents 13 Neglect CPS 410, Parents 241 Medical Neglect CPS 14 Parents 12 Fatalities CPS 6.4, Parents 1.5 CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES, HAPPILY DESTROYING HUNDREDS OF INNOCENT FAMILIES YEARLY NATIONWIDE AND COMING TO YOU'RE HOME SOON... BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION... |
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