Thousands of children are placed in foster care each year and the majority of them enter the system due to neglect or abuse. All of these children need to deal with the rejection and separation of their parents and sometimes that causes other issues that make the child more vulnerable. A problem sometimes with foster care is that it becomes a revolving door, having the child more back and forth from foster home to their biological parents and back again (Karger & Stoesz, 2014). This causes not only confusion but emotional trauma for these children. That isn’t the only issue with foster care in some cases however. There have been cases where children have been maltreated, which ends up bringing them back to what they thought they were away from.
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After looking at the different cases and articles regarding maltreatment of the foster children, the question of foster homes comes about. Are the homes that were accepted as foster homes really as safe as they should be? Are there places that should have never been approved as a foster home? There needs to be more research into the abuse of children in foster care to see how much of a problem this really is. The majority of children that reported psychological maltreatment stated that their birth parents are the cause of these issues. However, there were some that reported foster parents engaging in harmful practices (Baker, et. al, 2013). Without more studies done on this topic, the amount of children that are maltreated in foster care will continue to be unknown. A reason why there isn’t more research done could be because DCF and other agencies don’t want to believe that they are placing children into homes that aren’t good for them. The reason the child is taken from their parents is because it is unsafe, and no one wants to find out that the home they thought was safe turned out not to be. There have been cases of foster care child abuse that have been brought to the attention of some people, but there sometimes aren’t enough resources to allow that home to be investigated. This could be partially because there aren’t enough social workers to each child. They can’t possibly give each child the attention they need with the caseloads they have. The biggest question is, will the ratio of social work to children ever get
After looking at the different cases and articles regarding maltreatment of the foster children, the question of foster homes comes about. Are the homes that were accepted as foster homes really as safe as they should be? Are there places that should have never been approved as a foster home? There needs to be more research into the abuse of children in foster care to see how much of a problem this really is. The majority of children that reported psychological maltreatment stated that their birth parents are the cause of these issues. However, there were some that reported foster parents engaging in harmful practices (Baker, et. al, 2013). Without more studies done on this topic, the amount of children that are maltreated in foster care will continue to be unknown. A reason why there isn’t more research done could be because DCF and other agencies don’t want to believe that they are placing children into homes that aren’t good for them. The reason the child is taken from their parents is because it is unsafe, and no one wants to find out that the home they thought was safe turned out not to be. There have been cases of foster care child abuse that have been brought to the attention of some people, but there sometimes aren’t enough resources to allow that home to be investigated. This could be partially because there aren’t enough social workers to each child. They can’t possibly give each child the attention they need with the caseloads they have. The biggest question is, will the ratio of social work to children ever get