The Beginning of Foster Care Advocacy with Kaitlin

While the goal of foster care is to temporarily care for a child, keep them safe, and meet their ongoing needs until it is safe to reunify them with their birth parents or other family members,

placing a child into foster care almost doubles the risk of the child being abused compared to leaving them with their parents in the first place. This means that more than 40,800 children who were never abused now will be while in foster care. Foster care has long been criticized for failing to meet the needs of children, from allowing kids to age out of the system without safety nets in place, to struggling to adequately support youth and families. Nearly half of foster parents quit in their first year of fostering due to lack of support, poor communication with caseworkers, insufficient training to address child's needs and lack of say in the child's well-being. A child entering foster care will likely live in more than four homes during the first year of care. It is common for children who grow up in foster care to move more than 15 times.

Children enter Fostercare through no fault of their own.

Many feel a loss that doesn’t leave.

”I’m on my own”

Many feel they are damaged goods.

“No one wants me”

Many feel deep trauma that pains them.

“I can’t go on”

There are many pros and cons to being in foster care and I’ll address them all in this blog.

I will be posting my life story in a little while. Stay tuned..