The Numbers Game: Making Sense of the Latest Research on Youth in Foster Care

Should we be hopeful? Or should we despair?

I have been moving between these two emotions as I read the flurry of new research released in the
past few weeks.

There are reasons to be concerned for the children in our country. 16.4 million children now live in poverty. This is equal to 22% of all children, the largest number of American children in poverty in nearly 40 years. As the economy struggles to recover from recession, the most vulnerable Americans continue to suffer.

As the ranks of the impoverished grow, and as middle-class families find themselves slipping into financial stress, children are increasingly at risk. Another recently published report indicates that cases of child abuse have increased in correlation to, but not necessarily because of, the recession. While child abuse is not limited to families struggling with lost wages or lost jobs, economic struggles do raise the stresses on parents, who sometimes may not cope, to their own loved ones' detriment.

But among all of these disheartening numbers, this is another number that has intrigued me: 408,425.

This is the number of children who were in the foster care system on September 30, 2010. This number was released earlier this summer by the Children's Bureau, part of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, as part of their yearly AFCARS report.

This number has been going down steadily for the past decade. In 2002, this number was 523,000. Think about that. Today, there are 100,000 fewer children involved in the foster care system than just eight years ago.

Now, the key question is why this trend is happening. And this is the part that keeps me awake at night.

Our friends at the Children's Defense Fund have spent some time looking at these numbers, and they have come up with some great insights. As one example, they note that the number of children waiting to be adopted has trended down in the past year. At the same time, the percent of children who exited care into adoption is up slightly. This seems like a good sign: more children are leaving care to go to permanent homes.

But let's go back to that question: Why is the overall number of young people in out-of-home care going down? Are youth not entering care because parents are receiving earlier and more appropriate help to allow them to keep their children with them? If that is the case, that would be a very good result.

When we posted this question to our followers on Facebook, several people suggested another possible reason for the decline: more children are being voluntarily placed with relatives rather than entering the foster care system. This too might be good -- children are leaving abusive homes to find safe shelter. Or it might be that relative care is a temporary solution. As one Facebook commenter put it, "relatives are put into a situation that they can manage for a month or two, but not months, years, etc..."

Something else to consider: are fewer children entering care because caseworkers are reluctant to refer children into an already overwhelmed system -- something that has happened in past recessions? Or is this because abuse is being reported less often, but happening just as frequently? If so, then this number is a cause for alarm.

Even if the most hopeful interpretations are true, there could be unexpected consequences. For example, if more children are exiting the system more quickly, then who are the older youth still waiting for a permanent home? Who are the 43,000 young people in foster care who have been there more than three years?

I am going to choose to be hopeful, but vigilant. This decline may be good news, but clearly more work is needed to protect children in this country. I want to see the number of children in the foster care system drop to zero. I look forward to the day when child abuse is something we read about in the history books, not on the front pages of newspapers.

But in the meantime, we owe it to the thousands of children in care to remember that they are people, not statistics. We are obliged to listen to their concerns, to lift up their voices and to do everything we can to guide each of them safely to a permanent home.

 

 

Credit: Michael Piraino, CEO, National CASA Association
Follow Michael Piraino on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CASAforChildren 
article originally published 9/29/11 on http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

The "Aging Out" Dilemma Plaguing the Foster Care System

Imagine that because you've been abused or neglected as a child, you've spent the first 21 years of your life separated from your biological family, bouncing from one foster home to another and changing schools every few years. At 21-years-old, you have never paid rent, bought your own groceries or managed your own expenses.

With an education that's spotty at best, and no family or other support systems in place, you're told that you're now an adult and responsible for functioning in the world on your own. Would you be able to do it?

That is precisely the situation facing many young adults who age out of our child welfare system. And while outgoing ACS Commissioner Mattingly did a tremendous job on many fronts, he would probably agree that the "aging out" population is one that still requires urgent attention. As new Commissioner Richter takes over the agency, this would be an excellent time to take a fresh look at how we serve - or fail - these young people.

While local statistics are hard to come by for a population no longer under the city's care, nationally, one in four of the 20,000 foster care youth who age out of the child welfare system each year are incarcerated within two years; one in five become homeless, only half graduate from high school. With more than 900 young people aging out in New York each year, these numbers reflect a real problem.

Under the current system, when young people in foster care turn 21, they have the rug pulled out from under them. They must sink or swim. But if they sink, we all pay a price. Unable to manage on their own, with none of the support systems in place that we all take for granted, all too often, they end up homeless, or turn to drugs and crime - all of which take a toll on government budgets and the quality of life in our communities.

Because of their life experiences some kids need more support than others - and they may need it for longer. A 21-year-old who has lived most of his life in either the child welfare system or a dysfunctional family setting is not at the same level emotionally or cognitively as other 21-year-olds. And as every parent knows, you can't set an arbitrary schedule for maturity.

As nervous as we may be to send our own children away to college, for example, we recognize that we could not have gotten them more ready simply by training them better or earlier. Most of the kids we're talking about are not going away to college; they may not have graduated high school. There are no teachers or mentors or parents they can call when run out of money or get into trouble. They're on their own and, for many of them, 21 is simply not old enough. And no amount of training or better programming by the child welfare system could have hastened their readiness. Because of their many pressing needs and challenges, they have not been the beneficiaries of structured or guided exposure to life experiences that naturally facilitates the maturation process.

What's the solution? First, we need more and better programs to prepare these kids for life on their own. Once they are on their own, they are likely to still need help with housing, jobs and enrolling in some form of academic or vocational higher education. They may also need social work or mental health assistance to deal with issues like parents coming out of prison or siblings with drug problems. For those kids, providing this kind of support until age 23 could mean the difference between a productive life and a life in the corrections system or a homeless shelter. These age appropriate programs that work beyond the system are a very good investment indeed.

At the same time, we need to make it clear that this support for young adults is temporary, and that the recipient must ultimately bear responsibility for his or her own success. These young people must stay enrolled in school and hold a job, even if part time. There must be high expectations, no free rides, and a path toward independence in a relatively short term.

For Hispanic youngsters today, we're seeing particular challenges, at least partly due to changing immigration trends. Many young immigrants, coming here from a variety of countries, do not have the generational, family and community support that has existed for previous immigrant groups. Whatever extended family they may have to fall back on may already be stretched thin. Combine lack of family with language barrier and overall cultural differences, and that child is at even greater risk.

Critics may argue that at some point we need to stop supporting these kids and cut them loose, and that 21 seems like a logical age. After all, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on each of these kids up until that point - When is enough enough? If release from the child welfare system is no more than a path toward a homeless shelter or a jail cell, what have we accomplished? If by creating short term programs to teach the necessary skills prior to turning 21 and by providing some additional support for a limited period of time afterwards, we can put that young adult on the path to a successful productive life. Isn't that worth it?

Credit: Bill Baccaglini, Executive Director, The New York Foundling
originally published at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Is that Your REAL Sister?

Prepare kids for comments. Talk about what your children are likely to hear when a sibling of a different race arrives, says Deborah Johnson, executive director of the Minnesota Adoption Resource Network and a specialist in transracial adoption. Don’t let your children be taken by surprise. Be open about the choices you have made and the values your family espouses.

Gretchen and Paul Felopulos of Natick, Massachusetts, began having simple conversations about differences with Chloe long before they adopted Phoebe. Good thing, too. Soon after Phoebe arrived, when a playmate insisted, “She’s not your real sister!” Chloe was incensed, but prepared. “She is so my real sister!” she said. “She’s my forever sister!”

Tell kids the truth.
“As uncomfortable as it may be for you, don’t sugar-coat,” says Johnson. “It’s classic for parents to say, ‘Those people were staring because you and your sister are so cute.’ No, they were staring because you’re different. Say so: ‘They were staring because our family is different. We see each other every day, so we don’t notice our differences so much. But other people do.'"

Demonstrate good responses.
Children in transracial families fare best when parents illustrate a range of reactions, depending on the circumstances. If someone asks, “Is she adopted?” it may be a genuine, albeit stupid, question. Part of your job is to teach a life skill: How to evaluate people’s motives. Is this person sincere or merely rude, clueless or prejudiced? What is the tone? What is the body language? If someone is rude, it may be appropriate to turn your back, walk away, and then talk to your child. If a question is sincere, but misguided or inappropriate, you might say, “This isn’t a good place to talk. If you’re interested in adoption, I’m happy to have you call me.”

Children also need to know that their mood counts. Sometimes, a question isn’t an invasion of privacy, it’s just poorly timed. “‘I’m not in the mood to talk about it’ is a perfectly fine answer,” Johnson says.
If children five or older start to hate the attention, humor may the best antidote—when someone asks a silly question, roll your eyes at each other, or make a joke.

Credit: http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/

Getting Support While You Wait

The road to adoption is not an easy one for most families. If you're like most, you have probably endured tremendous disappointment, loss, stress, and a drain of financial resources, not to mention a roller coaster of alternating and exhausting emotions. If infertility was an issue, you and your partner are understandably disappointed. It can be overwhelming, to say the least, to have to begin yet another new experience-adoption-to get to your original goal of parenthood. When key people in your life-family, friends, neighbors, and others whose opinions you value-do not agree with your decision to adopt, the process can be even more discouraging and frustrating. By communicating openly, though, and understanding your role in educating family and friends about adoption, you can find the support you want and need during this challenging time.

Obstacles to Support

The biggest obstacles most prospective adopters and their families face is fear and misinformation. Fear comes in a number of sizes, shapes, and forms, and originates from many sources. Prospective adopters may fear a birthmother changing her mind; fear possible unknown medical issues; fear having to prove their competency as parents through a homestudy assessment; fear being out of control; fear becoming parents sooner-or later-than they expected; fear the unknown. It's sometimes easy to forget that the same fears and falsehoods that have invaded your lives as prospective adoptive parents have also been busy invading the lives of your family and friends, too. These same family and friends may share their concerns (before, during, and after your adoption) in less than supportive ways. "I just don't know if I could love someone else's child as my own..." "It costs how much???!!!" "I'm sure you'll get pregnant, maybe you're just trying to hard." "I could never give up a child!" "What if the birthparents change their minds?" "What's the "real" mother like?" "Are you going to keep trying to have one of your own?" These are just some of the comments that you're likely to hear.

Like fear, misinformation originates from many sources. People get their information and base their attitudes about adoption on what they read or see in the media, their generational, cultural, or religious beliefs, and their personal experience with adoption or with others who are adopted, have adopted, or know some one who has adopted. When you encounter fear or misinformation from a family member or friend, remember that you, too, have struggled with some of the same issues and concerns. Just as education and accurate information helped you move forward in your decision to adopt, so, too, will it help your family and friends. Share with them books or articles about adoption that you have found especially helpful. Bring them with you to information or support group meetings.

Being Sensitive to Others

Just as you expect that family and friends should be sensitive to the disappointment, loss, stress, and strain that you're experiencing, you must be sensitive to how your decision to adopt has affected those who are close to you. Would-be grandparents, aunts, and uncles may need to mourn the loss of a genetic grandchild, niece or nephew. Friends and other family members may find it difficult to enjoy their own pregnancies while you wait for your child to arrive if you do not give them permission.

Like you, many of your friends and family members may feel a lost sense of control. Most people are familiar with the mechanics and emotions involved in a biological pregnancy. There is a larger level of acceptance of the pregnancy experience as a whole (even though no pregnancy guarantees a successful outcome and a healthy child). Because in a pregnancy there are no choices involved to determine the age, gender, or relative health of the child, the family is relieved of making stressful decisions. In an adoptive pregnancy, decisions that need to be made-boy or girl?, how old?, international or domestic?, from which country?, how healthy is healthy?, whether to accept a specific referral?, and on and on-can be overwhelming and misunderstood by well meaning yet uninformed loved ones. The abstractness of an adoptive pregnancy is also difficult for family and friends. There is no increasing bulge at the tummy, no copies of ultrasounds, no eccentric eating habits to remind them that the pregnancy is progressing. Getting them involved in the process, though, will make it more concrete, and help foster a new sense of entitlement to the child who will be joining your family. Involvement can take many forms, including helping to decorate the child's room, helping select the child's name, or helping create a life-book for the to-be-family member.

Building Bridges

Understanding that it may be difficult for others to be able to empathize or even cope with the stress of your adoption won't necessarily bring you instant support, but it will help you cope with a disheartening response or questions and concerns from family and friends. It is also important that you seek support from people who are already familiar with adoption, such as other adoptive families, support groups, and family counselors as well. Bridges sometimes have to be built from relationships to adoption, they don't always just happen. But by taking a proactive stance to educate your loved ones about adoption, you will be one step closer to your dream of a family with the love and support you want and need.

Credit: James Molter is Executive Director of God's Children International, an adoption agency located in Orange County, California. He can be reached at director@godschildrenadoptions.org. He is also the adoptive father of an 11-year-old from Russia and the stepparent of a 28-year-old daughter.

Families for Alabama's Kids

Families 4 Alabama’s Kids is a recruitment and retention program of Alabama DHR that works statewide to recruit adoptive and foster parents for Alabama’s children needing loving, nurturing families. We encourage you to visit the Waiting Children page at Heart Gallery Alabama. 

If you do not have access to an email account and would like more information, call us at 1-866-4-AL-KIDS (1-866-425-5437) .

Partial Credit: www.dhr.alabama.gov

Avoiding Feelings of Isolation

Adoptive parents often feel that society looks more closely at their parenting preparedness and skill than to the preparedness and skill of biological parents. In many respects this is true, because of the rules and regulations established by the State Department of Human Services, and the adoption agency's responsibility for the well being of the child.

Some of the challenges that new adoptive parents may face include:

• Feeling that their own needs are not being met.
• Feeling isolated from friends.
• Feeling embarrassed to admit that challenges exist.
• Trying to do everything without help.
• Trying to please everyone.
• Feeling that everyone is watching and ready to critique the job they do.

Friends and family can help new parents overcome some of these challenges by inviting them out to a movie or sporting event, being willing to listen without giving too much advice, and offering a couple of hours of respite care once in a while. Additional support can come from services and resources for parents available in most communities.

In Alabama, APAC (Alabama Pre/Post Adoption Connections) has numerous Adoptive Family Groups (AFG) across the state that are offered to families at no cost. These AFGs are a wonderful place to network with other adoptive parents and gain insight from families just like you who may have faced similar challenges. These groups also offer an opportunity for adopted children to interact with one another in structured, fun activities that are led by a child therapist.

APAC also offers up to 20 free family counseling sessions to 1) families who are approved for adoption and waiting for placement of a child, 2) families who have a child 18 or under placed in the home with a plan for adoption by that family (the adoption does not need to have been finalized, but TPR must have taken place and the parents must be the identified adoptive resource for the child), and 3) families with a child 18 or under who was legally adopted -- whether through DHR or privately.  For more information on AFGs or Counseling services that APAC offers, please use the contact us link on the right sidebar of this blog.

Carrie Craft, host of the on-line newsletter, Your Guide to Adoption, was adopted, and as an adult has become an adoptive parent. She describes the adoptive parent as a gardener of love, mender of wounds, embracer of all, keeper of memories, weaver of lives, finder of lost things, and finisher of the race begun by another. Parents, both adoptive and biological, develop these skills by having a positive attitude, networking, creating a support system and with a lot of hard work.

Credit: Janet Benavente and Sheila Gains, February 2008,
"Families of Choice" updated August 29, 2011
Colorado State University

"Resolve" Infertility Part 2 of 2

But what does it really mean to resolve feelings of lose due to infertility? During a discussion on Adoptive Parents of Vietnam (APV) mailing list, parents proposed several useful definitions.

"I don't think that resolving any loss ever means getting to a point where the loss doesn't exist or doesn't matter any more. I think that resolving loss -- including infertility -- means putting it in its proper place and being able to move on in life without being held back from going forward by that loss." Cat V.

One adoptive mom provided this insight on what it means to adoptive parents to "resolve" issues of infertility.

"From my understanding, to have "resolved" our infertility means to feel firm in our intent to build our family through other means other than birth. That we have determined that to keep trying to have a birth child is not the important thing anymore. Our purpose is not fulfilled by means of continuing to try to get pregnant, since our purpose is to have children. We have resolved to go forward into adoption whole-heartedly and without reserve..." Debbie H.

A photograph represents the emotional losses of infertility in this helpful metaphor presented by another parent.

"At the point when the loss isn't resolved -- the photograph is in front of you, it is all you see, and it blocks you from moving forward with your life. During the grieving process this is, of course, perfectly normal...Resolving that loss doesn't mean putting the picture behind you. It doesn't mean pretending like the loss never happened or that it doesn't matter. That would be denying the loss, nor resolving it."

"Resolving the loss would be more like putting the picture beside you, but off to the side. The picture is still there, you still remember it, you still grieve your loss, and it does matter. At some points in your life the picture will come more to the forefront than at others and grief will return. Yet, the picture doesn't block your way anymore... you can move forward." Cat V.

Certain events are prone to trigger emotional feelings related to infertility loss - for example, a pregnancy, birth announcement, Mother's Day, birth in the family or a close friend's pregnancy. Parents shared examples of these trigger events in the discussion.

"I think that many of us were probably asked during our home study if we had 'resolved' our infertility. Yeah, right. We accept it, but I have to wonder if it gets 'resolved'. I think it will pop up at certain moments when we least expect it, much like adoption issues for our kids." Trish M.

Credit: Allison Martin, http://www.comeunity.com/, © Copyright 2000

Allison Martin, M.P.A., is the manager of the Adopt Vietnam and the national Families with Children from Vietnam websites. Allison Martin has three well beloved children, two who joined her family by international adoption.

"Resolve" Infertility Part 1 of 2

One of the questions prospective parents are routinely asked during their adoption home study is whether they have "resolved" their infertility. This issue is raised because it is a widespread paradigm in the professional adoption community that infertile, prospective adoptive parents need to resolve their feelings of loss to fully accept their children. Issues related to infertility that may impact adoptive families include loss of a "dream" or idealized child, loss of physical connection of pregnancy and biological heredity, and loss of continuity of inheritance. Resolution of these issues and feelings is intended to ensure that lingering frustration, anger, sadness or other emotions don't create tension or avoidance of important issues within the adoptive family.

Confronting and moving beyond issues of loss is an important part of the life long journey of adoption for all members of the triad (adoptive parents, birth parents and children). While these feelings may sometimes resurface when evoked by certain life stages or by emotional triggers, such as a friend's pregnancy, a person's outlook and the emotional intensity of these issues usually transforms over time. If parents are able to move forward and feel comfortable with adoption, they can support their children (and each other) in surmounting their emotional feelings and issues.

If the issues related to feelings of loss due to infertility aren't resolved, parents can end up feeling removed or even resentful toward their children. They may be unable to acknowledge that their children have birth parents. Or they may be unable to accept with grace the ways in which their children are different from them in temperament or appearance or ability. Some of these reactions are perfectly normal at times. [For example, I have noticed that it is part of the bonding process for many prospective and new parents not to think much about their children's past (e.g., the existence of birth parents)]. However, as with most things, continued denial can result in an imbalance in the relationship. Children are sensitive to their parents' emotions and thoughts, even if they are unspoken.

Credit: Allison Martin, copyright 2000, http://www.comeunity.com/

Allison Martin, M.P.A., is the manager of the Adopt Vietnam and the national Families with Children from Vietnam websites. Allison Martin has three well beloved children, two who joined her family by international adoption.

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