FOSTER CARE HEADQUARTERS
What IS Foster Care Anyway?
What foster care is... And isn't.
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Foster care, in its current form, is designed to provide help to families in crisis, and then help those families come back together whenever possible. The current system has procedures in place to ensure that families have adequate opportunities to make the necessary changes to ensure that their children have all of their basic needs met, and are safe and secure.
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During the time these families are in limbo, the children are placed with caregivers - foster parents. Often times, they are complete strangers, and this is very confusing for the children involved. Of course, even when they are relatives or family friends, it is still confusing and scary.
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Foster parents are there to care for the basic needs of these children - food, shelter, clothing... But also to care for their educational needs and emotional needs. They are also often needed as mentors and to guide children to make good decisions, help them social and spiritual issues, and of course, love them.
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Most foster parents work really hard to care for the children they've been entrusted with, and truly care about the children in their homes... But even when they love the children and do everything to protect them, they will never be an acceptable substitute for the biological parents of these children, and irreperable harm to the child's emotional well-being is often a symptom of foster care.
Foster care was never designed to replace the family, but rather to help it repair itself. Unfortunately, some families just cannot be fixed. When a family cannot be kept together, the system begins to break down and the children suffer the consequences. Regardless of how broken a family is, a child will often feel the loss the same as if a doting and loving parent had died.