re: What Is Society’s Responsibility When the Foster System Fails?

The timing of this thread was pretty prescient and makes me rethink my last statement in this thread. We have three young foster siblings that have been with us a little over a year, two of them were with us before for about a year. This time when they came to us, they tested positive for meth and that was the reason for the removal. We thought there was no chance in hell the system would send the kids back to the mother who for the first 9 months of the placement, failed all of her drug tests.

We had an FST meeting today, which is a meeting where the bio parents, the foster parents and all the child services staff get together to discuss the next steps. The exact same thing is happening again with the kids, because the Mom has tested clean for a couple of months they are fast tracking reunification. They are moving to four hour visits which will then turn into weekends and finally reunification. If this pans out like last time, the system has failed these kids, not us as Foster parents, but the system run by the state and local officials

End the Federal Reserve and things will get better.

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If this pans out like last time, the system has failed these kids, not us as Foster parents, but the system run by the state and local officials

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I was shocked by how much emphasis is placed on family reunification, seemingly at the expense of the kids. The whole system is broken, but I'm not sure how it can be fixed. Family reunification is important. There are just so many other variables that should be taken into consideration.

What should we expect from someone who was never taught how to be a parent? Poor parenting



Who never saw a healthy relationship, who was raised by the state, and then dropped by it? Poor parenting



At what point does society step in beyond a punitive role, but to prevent tragedy? Perhaps tougher vetting for foster parents but you're cutting off your nose to spite your face with the lack of willing fosters to begin with. Possibly generous tax breaks for fostering but again are you attracting the right crowd of individual's whose heart is really in it to help raise someone else's child or just those that are out for a quick pay day ?

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Caused by what?

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The father said the baby fell off the bed.

I have an 8 month old who fell off our couch onto a wood floor and he certainly didn't have any brain damage after. I suspect this baby was shaken.

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No financial benefits for foster parents so the proper motivation can be closer to guaranteed.

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I don’t think you realize just how little financial assistance we as foster parents get to foster a child. Our monthly stipend barely covers the cost for a couple of weeks of fostering. We aren’t making money as a foster family, it costs us money to take in children

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I have an 8 month old who fell off our couch onto a wood floor and he certainly didn't have any brain damage after.

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Saving for your child’s future lawsuit, surely you brought it to a medical professional to determine that and didn’t use your… uhhh… powerful mind.

Yep. Always women who can't defend their position. You'd been perfectly fine with dr snipping it's spine in the womb.

I think a better solution would be to limit the number of unrelated placements once can have in a home to two or three kids at a time. I think by doing that you could root out the fraud

No matter how many times I say I'm pro-life, people like you will always show up guns blazing to lecture me about how immoral abortion is. Forgive me if I realize stating what I actually believe is a waste of time because you're only interested in whatever fictional narrative you're pushing.