A Critical Look At The Foster Care System
OVERVIEW
Children entering the shadowy world of foster care are often assigned labels arbitrarily and on a bed-available basis. They may end up spending some time in conventional foster homes, only to find themselves shuffled through group homes, residential treatment facilities, mental hospitals and prisons. Scant attention is given to the needs of these children, and the conditions they are forced to endure are often far worse than those endured by prisoners in some third world nations.
THE LABELING OF CHILDREN
Kenneth Wooden, Executive Director of the National Coalition for Children's Justice, explained to a Congressional Subcommittee that there is little difference in the background ...
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"treatment centers"--a "growth industry" which feeds on unwanted children just as the nursing home business depends for its existence on large numbers of the unwanted elderly. And, as is the case with the elderly, the systematic neglect and maltreatment of children in these facilities is being subsidized by the federal government.
In Virginia, former Governor Douglas Wilder discovered the same labeling process to be in use, finding that "children often bounce from agency to agency, from foster to group home to institution, and from funding stream to funding stream." Wilder explained: "They are often defined by the system whose door they happen to enter: a welfare child if he comes through that door; a juvenile justice child if he happens to come through that system; a school system child; or a mental health child." Once that label is attached, however, the funding stream may continue to flow, even after a child leaves one system for another. The former Governor testified that ...
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State facility in which two children were held for days at a time in a cell with only 25 square feet of floor space; children hogtied in State juvenile training schools in Florida -- wrists handcuffed, ankles handcuffed, then placed stomach down on the floor, and wrists and ankles joined together behind their backs. In the training school in Oregon children were put in filthy, roach-infested isolation cells for weeks at a time. In the Idaho training school, children were punished by being put in strait jackets, and being hung, upside down, by their ankles.[2]
Children continue to be assigned labels arbitrarily, and often on a bed-available basis.
A recent South Carolina audit reveals ...
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A Critical Look At The Foster Care System. (2004, September 17). Retrieved November 30, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/A-Critical-Look-Foster-Care-System/14505
"A Critical Look At The Foster Care System." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 17 Sep. 2004. Web. 30 Nov. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/A-Critical-Look-Foster-Care-System/14505>
"A Critical Look At The Foster Care System." Essayworld.com. September 17, 2004. Accessed November 30, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/A-Critical-Look-Foster-Care-System/14505.
"A Critical Look At The Foster Care System." Essayworld.com. September 17, 2004. Accessed November 30, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/A-Critical-Look-Foster-Care-System/14505.
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