Warehousing our children - Orphanages return?

The Christian Science Monitor ^ | 06/19/03 | Mary Wiltenburg |

[the Real fifi]

I agre. There are not many people available to take on this task;the social service agencies do a terrible oversight job;citizens and volunteers can be named to provide regular oversight in orphanages which they cannot do in private homes. Orphanages may not be ideal, but in many cases they beat the alternative.

[pesto]

sign me up, I'll take 5!

[Aliska]

used for family-preservation services.

What a novel idea.

[Aliska]

an orphan assigned to them.

Not. That is exploiting the orphan big time. Orphans should only go to people who will love and take care of them in the proper way.

[Orangedog]

The population of American foster children in institutional settings is quietly growing, they say - not due to any concerted social or legal effort, just a pieced-together system that affords comparatively few services to families in need but offers fiscal incentives to take children away.

Here in the article is stated the future of the American "family."

Now here is another quote from the story that is very important: ...proposal that would allow states to take their annual foster care money - currently the only bottomless pool of funds available for poor kids - in an up-front sum that could be used for family-preservation services. The child welfare community is divided: some Bush detractors actually support the proposal, citing its potential to strengthen family services; many institutional care providers oppose it.

This trend will continue. In fact, it will pick up momentum and and snow-ball over the next few years. All of this will be brought to you by states looking to, once again, fatten their general funds by destroying families. I'm not talking about the abused kids here. I mean children who's parents are divorced or in some cases never married. I know I will be jumped on by the usual crowd for daring to question the motives of people who are just looking out "for the children", but I could care less about them.

This will all be brought to you courtesy of the divorce industry. No fault divorce laws coupled with the bias in domestic relations courts in favor of mothers at the fathers expense have help to greatly contribute to the current 50% divorce rate. Mothers are awarded custody in about 90% of all contested custody cases, and with the children goes most of the assests and and good portion of the fathers after tax income. The states get over 4 billion dollars from Washington to enforce support orders. The states' federal funding for this is tied directly to the amount they collect, giving incentive for states to set the support guidelines higher and higher. How will this impact the growing foster care rolls? When mothers file for divorce, they give the courts (re: government) a tremendous amount of power to remove the father from the family...power that free of concerns with violating due-process and parental rights because the sheep at the voting booth will sign on to anything when they are told that it's being done "for the children." The money and power hungry in state and federal legislatures as well as the agencies and companies who profit from destroying families will move in to save the day. The same system that (by no means all) women have used to get rid of their husbands will turn on them. Where the kids go, so goes the funding...from the father and the feds. The reason for taking the kids from the mother will be likely be that the children will be better off in loving, caring foster home where married people can provide a stable environment instead of being stuck in the center of a divorce and custody fight. At this point, the support money that was going to mom will go to social services so they can pay the foster families, while keeping a little more for administrative costs, of course.

Think it won't happen? Children have been the tool of big government types for a long, long time. Don't think that they will stop using them now. [/soapbox]

[stuartcr]

Then they will never be emptied.

[Orangedog]

How would you discern between a lazy, poor person, and a not lazy poor person?

None of us here will have to decide that....the courts and social service investigators will do that...follow the money.

[Orangedog]

ping!

[stuartcr]

OK, how will the courts discern the difference?

[waRNmother.armyboots]

This is a no brainer. Do they work for a living? Any job will do. Do they get up in the morning and go to work? Do they keep a clean home and yard? As my momma says "soap and water are cheap".

[stuartcr]

What about poor people that go to work, but are too tired or poor to mow their yard? How about rich lazy people, should they have a lot of kids?

[Orangedog]

The same way they do in many divorce cases where custody is an issue: they will listen to whatever social service workers have to say and rubber stamp it. The courts are a giant sheep-shearing assembly line...they just want to move the cases on along. Judges like getting endorsements from these departments come election time.

[stuartcr]

That's why nothing will change.

[Aliska]

Then bring people who will love them and take care of them properly into the orphanages. Wait. That'll never happen either. Love is a rare commodity.

The main thing wrong with orphanages in the first place is there was little love there.

[Aliska]

commodity=wrong word. I don't have the right word.

[AppyPappy]

So rather than financially helping out a poor parent, some advocate taking their children away.

That's because no amount of money is enough for some people.

[Orangedog]

Rich people can afford a staff of well-connected lawyers to keep little problems like that from happening to them. And no, it's not class warfare. It's how the system works. If you have the right lawyer, he can make these problems go away.

[Orangedog]

DING-DING-DING-DING! "Johnny, tell him what he's won!"

[stuartcr]

For whatever reasons...there almost always have been orphans, and there probably always will be orphans....it's the way people are.

[jimt]

Well this is interesting give that I just had a discussion on another thread in which some advocate the State taking away children from their parents, not for abuse, but because they are poor.

That's not exactly true. I advocate taking children away from parents who are continually not acting responsibly towards them, NOT those who are poor. But then you know that, as I told you so directly.

Please don't forget to add what I further said. If after a period (I said two years) of continual non-support of a child, or if further non-supported children were conceived, I'd not only strip them of their parental rights but also send them to jail, where they'd stop this incredibly anti-social activity.

On the other hand, while you don't say so directly, you seem to advocate that all of us have a responsibility to support not only children, but irresponsible "parents" (in the lifestyle they get to choose) while they shirk their duty to support their kids. It doesn't seem to matter to you if the "parents" repeatedly produce kids they won't support, or if they produce new kids while already on the dole.

I'm sorry, but this is a morally reprehensible position. You give people unlimited freedom to produce children, while giving us the unlimited burden of supporting people in their role as baby producers. That's flat out wrong - as wrong as me stealing your TV so I can hock it for my beer money.