The Foster Care System

1262 Words6 Pages
Foster Care System To be loved, to be praised, to be cherished; three things that every child in the world wishes for. It is a parent's job to grant their children with these needs. However, some children are not as lucky as others and are not blessed with the caring parents that they deserve. Luckily, the foster care system is there to help. The foster care system helps provide safety and care for children whose families are unable to do so. There has always been a way for children to be cared for in the United States. In the early 1800s orphan asylums were the most popular way for homeless children to be taken care of. Then institutional care came around, where children were taught to grow up as quickly as possible. Placing-out was then…show more content…
The parents were either deceased and the relatives were not capable of fostering the child or the parents were inadequate of taking care of a child. However, most of the children placed in the orphan asylums had at least one parent living, but that one parent was not responsible enough to care for the child. The orphan asylums were also known as orphanages. In the orphanages the children were provided with care, safety and education. They helped place children with families for adoption. They placed small children with families where they would get more attention and indentured the older children so that they would receive an…show more content…
This method of foster care was supposed to protect the children from the families and places that they came from. However, in 1870 child abuse and neglect within foster families arose in the headlines. It was found that the abuse resulted from organizations not doing background checks on the families. The foster organizations used advertising to look for homes to place the children. When the families would apply they would not do background checks on the family and just hand the child over. Likewise, they maintained little to no contact with the children and rarely checked on them. If they checked on the children they found that most of the time they would need to be moved. Children in the system for just a year would experience about 4 placements. When the public found out about the problems with the system, they revolted. Luckily, the organizations started doing at home checks to fix the issue and the foster care system was back to helping the kids better than

More about The Foster Care System

Open Document