We’ve all heard the saying “Evil thrives when good people do nothing”. But that’s not quite accurate.
Evil’s best friends are those who do just enough to “look good”. And that’s a good description of our current foster care system.
For evidence, look to the 2020 report from the Children’s Bureau at the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. They reported that out of the approx. 407,000 children in foster care, over 50% will be arrested, convicted or experience detention. In fact, within just two years of leaving the foster care system, 25% will be involved with the criminal legal system. And children moved to five or more placements are at a 90% risk of being involved in crime.
The study showed that an astounding 70% of former foster care youth were arrested at least once before age 26.
If you are a foster care case worker, you know what the problems are better than anyone. And this letter is written to you, and to all the politicians who enable the system as it is…
Like most people in the system, you’ve rationalized staying put and keeping quiet by pointing to the incredible needs of the kids. Here’s the problem with that line of thinking…
Let’s say you were a fire fighter known for running into houses and dramatically rescuing people trapped in blazing homes. That’s a great thing, and people rightly call you a hero. However, what if it was discovered that in doing so, you rarely bothered to venture to the second floor of any residence? What would people think if they discovered you simply walked away as soon as the people on the first floor were rescued. What kind of hero would you be?
Would anyone ever call you a hero for that?
The hard truth is, the vast number of children in the foster system are trapped on that second floor. As the stats above proved, the majority of foster kids end up crammed into that inferno on the second floor.
But the system you serve rarely addressed the extreme problems they have. As a foster parent, I know it takes months and months of begging and badgering to get any kind of therapy for a child. Even then, we often received the most basic things like “play therapy”. Or the funniest part was having a violent child in our home that beat my wife, and being offered “family therapy” so we’d know how to better cope with being abused! Of the crazy “safety plans” telling you things like “if the child is attacking you, make sure any knives or sharp objects are locked away”…
Really? We shouldn’t let the kid have access to a butcher knife? No kidding!
One of our favorite action steps given was that if our child became violent, we should call the police. So the police come out and awkwardly stare at the child, who of course is calm as can be now. They do the best they can, maybe even try to lecture the kid about being good. Then they leave, and a few days later the child starts being violent again.
You treat symptoms of the child’s trauma only, rarely taking on the cause of their problems. Eventually, the family usually gets tired and demands the child be moved. This bounces the child around the foster system, and eventually leads to that 90% number above of foster kids being involved in a crime.
Did you comprehend that number? 90% of them.
From impotent helps like these, you make it clear to foster families they are on their own. And if like our family, they continue to advocate for treatment to actually try and help the child, you don’t like that at all. In fact, if they don’t play ball, eventually you will take the child and shut their home down in “bad standing”. Which normally shames them into being quiet…
Except us. Our family is not going to be quiet.
Let’s go back to the burning house analogy. So what if those families caring for the kids on the second floor refuse to leave them behind? What do you do to them? Our experience is you quickly barricade them in and throw gasoline on the fire, so that their cries for help will be quickly incinerated.
In the real world, you torch their reputations so few politicians or attorneys have the stomach to take up their cause. After all, many of the protests you get usually come from biological parents whose kids have been removed because of many reasons, including substance abuse or neglect. So how easy is it just to lump these “second floor families” into the same bunch? You get everyone in your agency on the same page, and together you barricade the access to them on that second floor.
If anyone asks about the cries, you say, “But just look at all the kids on the first floor we saved. And who likes to do stairs anyway?”
Then you complain you don’t have enough foster parents to take in kids. How do you have the guts to act surprised then when so few decent families want to help you?
Your job should be the kids on that second floor, who have experienced the most trauma and often act out in ways that will destroy their futures and eventually put them in prison.
What should you do? When you eventually leave your job (and most of you do. We’ve never had the same case worker for more than 6 months at a time), speak up about what you’ve seen. There are people in charge who could try to change it, but are too comfortable. Make them uncomfortable. They are holding onto a career at the expense of children’s wellbeing. If they won’t change the system, they should be doing something else.
The system is not “broken”. Things are broken when accidentally dropped. But this is happening on purpose, with full knowledge of people like you involved, as well as politicians who look the other way.
The system is criminally negligent and corrupt. The flames are roaring, and there are children trapped on the second floor.
When the house is on fire, can anyone really be a hero who refuses to take the stairs?
