Foster Care Failures

FOSTER CARE

The current foster care system was designed to replace the former orphanage system. The idea is to place children into private homes so that they can receive love and see a functioning family modeled. Unfortunately, it is a system of great mistrust. Each state, and often each county within the state, has different rules and governing authority, so I can only speak for our dealings with and our observation of other’s experiences with the county of Los Angeles in Southern California. Currently, seventy-three thousand children in Los Angeles County are supervised by the Department of Children’s Services in non-parental caregiver homes each month.

Although responsible to the county, there are many private agencies that contract with the county to take foster children. These agencies are usually owned by former social workers that see it as a way to make more money. Rules vary from agency to agency and foster parents who "work" (we are told that we are volunteers) for them are certified. Those who "work" for the county of L. A. are licensed by the state of California. I've been with the county plus a couple of private agencies. It's no picnic either way you go, but the "pay" varies from one to the other by several hundreds of dollars. We are with one of the highest-paying agencies in the county and we receive a grand sum of seventy-eight cents an hour "reimbursement" for child care expenses plus a Medi-Cal card to cover most medical expenses, if you can find a doctor willing to accept it. All food, clothing and other expenses come out of the seventy-eight cents an hour. Foster care is not for those looking to make money from the proposition, although you will be accused of it.

Seldom do you get accurate information about the children, and I believe that Social workers are willing to lie if it means getting a home for the child. Unfortunately, the same is true for children going into adoptive homes. There are laws against not disclosing information, but I have seen it happen over and over again. When I said it was a system of mistrust, I meant it. Not only does the state not trust the natural parents from whom the children were removed, they don't trust the foster parents either. Our agency is in our home once a week for one hour per child. Plus a monthly home inspection, plus a monthly county Social worker visit, plus a yearly state inspection.

A bump or a bruise can easily turn into an abuse investigation against the foster family. You are given exhaustive and almost inhuman sets of rules to obey. They measure our room, refrigerator and water temperature, and all knives and scissors must be locked up as well as chemicals and medications. Sometimes they even count your towels. They have a right to enter your home any time, day or night. We are required to lock our shampoo, deodorant, hair spray, room deodorizers, and baby powder! Anything that says, "Keep out of reach of children" must be locked up including toothpaste. We are not allowed to have any expired food or medication in the house and, I am told, we would be written up for a Class A Health and Safety violation if we had so much as a rotten potato in our cupboard. Do you know anybody that has never had a potato spoil? The pressure to be perfect is overwhelming.

If we want to go to a movie without the kids, we have to hire a fingerprinted baby-sitter. If we want to travel out of the county, (that's county, not country), we must have court permission. If I sound frustrated and disgusted with the system, I am! But I love the kids, and they make it worth the effort. The whole thing would be so much easier if the system would back off a little. We take sixteen hours of parenting classes per parent per year, plus first aid and CPR. There's more, but I'm afraid I might scare any interested party off.

Although overworked and underpaid (or so they tell me), Social workers are treated as expendable by their superiors. We seem to have an endless stream of them, ten in one year just from the private agency. The director's position at our agency has turned over five times in four years. This means constantly adjusting to new people with different views and rules.

We didn't know that there were such things as Christian foster care agencies when we signed up, otherwise we would have gone with one of them. A few years ago, it seemed as though black had become white and white had become black in our agency. They were de-certifying Christian foster parents because a few had spanked their charges. The atmosphere had become very hostile specifically toward Christians and the common opinion was that all Christians were liars because we signed a paper that said we wouldn't use any form of corporal punishment, but some had. Many of our Social workers were New-Agers who saw their psychics and read their tea leaves. One man was even a Shaman (warlock) and had written a book of incantations. This was all perfectly acceptable to the agency, whereas Christians weren't to be trusted or tolerated. Unlike most people, we weren't even entitled an opinion, as we were mocked at their staff meetings. Unfortunately, the whole mental health field is often dominated by wounded, power-hungry, angry people, and as a Christian it can be a little intimidating to have them in authority over you. But remember, the Word tells us to obey the laws of the land, and fear God, not men. End sample

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