Foster Care Shouldn't Be a Profit Center for Families

newsmax ^ | Nov 25, 2017 | Michael Reagan

[Oshkalaboomboom]

It’s ironic or tragic or outrageous that in a nation where parents are allowed to keep their children on the family health insurance policy until they’re 26-years-old, many foster children are told to hit the streets when they turn 18. Why is that you ask? Foster parents receive a monthly stipend for foster children in their care. The check is based on the age of the child, extenuating circumstances, and if the child has any disabilities. Amounts can vary depending of the state administering the program.

One thing all the checks have in common is that when the child turns 18 the money from the state stops. Call me naïve, but I would have thought that if a family truly cared about the individual it was fostering the absence of a check would not make any difference.

It shows you how much I know. For some revenue-minded foster "parents" when opening the door no longer provides a check, the foster child is shown the door.

In South Carolina the non-profit Carolina Youth Development Center is working to change this unpleasant reality for at least a few that have aged out of foster care.

CYDC is partnering with Cummins International — the manufacturer of the diesel engines that power the big rigs — to produce independent living transitional housing for those former foster kids. CYDC CEO Beverly Hardin told the Moultrie News, “Children don’t just become independent when they turn 18. They still need guidance and a safe and stable environment in order for them to grow into responsible adults capable of caring for themselves.”

[papertyger]

the take away is: not all families should be reunified.

No one in their right mind claimed they should; that's what makes your outburst so revealing.

[papertyger]

are they?

I wouldn't think so, but you're the one making a "distinction without difference" predicated on a group of individual's vocation, so I'd say the question is yours to answer.

[yldstrk]

I thought I was responding to some comment about religious orphanages.................get with it

[yldstrk]

get a clue

[papertyger]

It’s kinda hard to “get with” something when it inadvertently shows it’s author has rather glaring emotional pathologies.

[papertyger]

get a clue

How incisive!

[4yearlurker]

In the early 1960s I was in Foster Homes with two of my older brothers on Phoenix,AZ. The first place where we were sent to was two big fat nasty woman with about 8 or 10 dirty kids running around. We had to stay in the fenced in back yard all day and ate once a day. I saw a kid take a extra piece of cornbread off the tray and the woman slapped the crap out of him. After about a month of this the three of us just walked out the front door together down the street. About an hour later a cop pulls up to us and tells us "Get in." The next Foster home was in Apache Junction where we had the run of the house and the people were nice to us. She said "Eat when you want but clean up after yourself." Wow! never heard that before. I could go on and on.

[manc]

All a matter of luck who we get I guess.

[4yearlurker]

Yes. But as a result of doing without many things folks take for granted I know the true meaning of “Give us this day out daily bread.” My kids NEVER went hungry or did without. I did what ever I had to do to provide.

[litehaus]

“In many states the money for the foster home comes from ‘child support’ taken from the father or parents income, if any”

If children’s fingerprints were taken, AND COMPARED from state to state (Take the Carolinas and Maryland for instance)
I suspect the ‘costs’ would go down by millions, if not billions across the country.. You can ‘bet your bippie’ you’ll find many kids ..ah hells bells, never gonna happen...

[yldstrk]

I am emotionally pathological? Nice. And you?

[papertyger]

I am emotionally pathological? Nice. And you?

...are not prone to going on rants about the hidden dangers of stuffed animals, and the potential for puppies and kittens as a vector for plague-like diseases....

Are you sure you want to play this card?

[papertyger]

Ah, but I have your petulant demands as FReepmail.

Very useful for humiliating your supercilious hipster ethos in future exchanges.....

[yldstrk]

stuffed animals? You are insane

[papertyger]

beats willfully obtuse every time....

[BlueDragon]

beats willfully obtuse every time.

But -- you are that too.

[papertyger]

I see your butt hurt has healed enough for you to come out and play!

Can’t wait!

[papertyger]

Damn! Seems I accidentally posted this to myself instead of it’s intended recipient.

Now what were you saying about the cruelty of nuns?

[Clinging Bitterly]

Good people if you want to think that, fine. Elsewhere in the news we find a story of two boys in NE Portland Oregon who were farmed out to a state funded home and how things went for them. White, English speaking boys sent to a home where the foster parents do not speak English (presumably Spanish), kept in a windowless basement room, laundry and cleaning not being done and sent to school in dirty, stinky clothes and finally, subjected to long term harassment and sexual hazing by a succession of older boys in the home. And even though state caseworkers are required to make a personal visit to each child at least once every 30 days, they made none in most of two years the boys were in that home. The state paid them $750,000 in a settlement and the "news" is how much of that the lawyers got as much as the negligent actions of the state and the abusive actions of the foster parents.

It may not be the same in every state but the whole system in Oregon is rigged to maximize the federal spiff given to states for kids "in the system" to support an ever growing cadre of union represented government employees (indeed, foster parents themselves are forced to join and pay a part of their stipend to SEIU local 503) as the base of the Democrat political machine. They couldn't care less about the welfare of the kids, they are simply a revenue stream.