EthnieMay Whitmore
Dr. Travis Southern
Rhetoric 1, Section G
Monday, January 14, 2025
It was early January when my parents broke the news to me that Travis would be leaving our home. Our bright little sunshine was four years old at the time and had been three when he came into our home. In 2019, Travis was part of the foster care system and had been an unplanned, long-term foster child who stayed in our home for nine months. What I thought would be a slightly awkward and pitiful experience turned out to be one of the best nine months of my whole life. I gained a younger brother, yet lost one at the same time: Travis will forever be in my heart.
Now to tell you the beginning of the story: In February of 2020,my mom told me there would be a little boy coming to stay with us. I knew my parents had applied for short-term foster care a while back as we’d had many house inspections and people came to interview my siblings, but I wasn’t quite ready when Travis walked into our lives. He came in with a high fever —which the social worker claimed was just from exhaustion — and he had an ear infection. After Travis had been put into my moms arms and the papers were signed, the social worker promptly walked away. This demonstrates the amount of neglect for kids in the foster care system. Most are just seen as “a pain” or “something to deal with, and are looked down upon and not taken care of. The change that needs to happen is awareness of the system, and action taken upon the parents and more help needs to be given to the kids – not just with money, but emotionally.
What are the causes for kids to be in the foster care system? Why should any child grow up in an unstable home? Well, the leading cause for kids in the foster care system today is neglect from the parents. Adults dealing with substance abuse, abuse of themselves, or unable or are unable to provide a safe and stable home for the child. Many kids who are in foster care come from parents who don’t want children, who don’t seek to care for the young lives that they have created. Many foster kids feel neglected and unsafe, and so therefore have significant trust issues in the world around them. ADHD, ADD in PTSD are common disorders found in foster kids.
After Travis left our home, we had several other short-term children come stay with us, including the demon children, two boys under the age of two who basically terrorized our house for an entire night. Aleigha was 16 years old with a baby girl in her arms, Azzalah, and was in our home for around three weeks. After Travis, I thought that she would stay with us for longer, and I was excited to have an older sister.
She ended up stealing my mother’s credit card and spent hundreds of dollars. I asked myself, why do this? She had people around her who wanted to help! I have concluded that she did this not just because she thought she could, but because she felt the need to steal. That’s how she knew how to get things. “You must fend for yourself.” Her fear of being seen as weak led her to do things under the radar – even if it was bad. She had no one to truly trust and ask questions too.
Trust is one of the biggest things lacking in a child’s life. Every kid needs an adult in their life whom they can trust. A child might feel unsafe and therefore do irrational things that society deems poor today. Thus deeming them terrible and gaining them a reputation that is not appropriate to society.
When a child is raised in an unstable home with abuse around them, trust is few, far and lacking between. There may be only one adult or sibling in their life they can turn to—or perhaps none at all. When a child’s life is turned upside down by a stranger arriving at their home, probably even in a blue uniform, to tell them they’re being taken away from everything they’ve ever known is probably very scary. Even in a terrible situation, the fragile trust in the familiarity of that unstable environment crumbles completely.
So who can foster children trust? No one? Must the world around them be so cruel? Who will fight for them?
My mom is a gal. No, not a gal like a cowgirl, like Olivia’s speech, but a guardian ad litem G.A.L. A GAL is a trained community volunteer who is appointed, along with a guardian ad litem attorney advocate, by district court judge to investigate and determine the needs of abused and neglected children, petitioned into the court system by a department of social services. Mom has taken many cases in the past year and reunited kids of parents, relatives. Last week I was privileged enough to go with her to one of her cases and witness what happened.
In court, cases are assigned at the same time each day. Like students in a class instead of private tutoring. In our time slot of 9 am on Monday, five court cases about foster care were petitioned at the same time. Our case was not the first, so I had the privilege of listening to two other cases before ours.
Within the three cases that I was able to witness, I observed three completely different perspectives of the foster care system when it comes to the legal standpoint. The first case was about a dad who desperately wanted to be reunited with his son and had been working for the past couple of years to do so. His son was staying with grandma, and grandma could testify that dad had been working hard in rehab to be able to maintain a better life for his son. “I knew and admitted that I needed to fix myself. I was on my knees and talking to God. I really started embracing the bible.” The dad said. This case shows that parents can be desperate, even after poor decisions, to be reunited with their children.
The next case was also joyous. The daughter wanted to live with her mom while the father was dealing with legal issues. The legal guardianship was delivered to mom, signed off by dad. When the judge’s handle bore down upon the mallet, the mother and daughter started crying with tears of joy. This perspective shows that not all court cases are broken or bound to fall apart, and the child can be united with someone they love.
The third and final case that I viewed – which was my mom’s case – dealt with completely dysfunctional parents. These people had immigrated and sought refuge from Saudi Arabia – but the mom had already committed felonies and didn’t agree with her husband about their child. Their kid has been staying primarily at daycare or with mom while dad has been able to have visits, few and far in between. The judge that day made no decisions in court for any change, but said that the parents needed to get their act together before they did anything else. In the meantime, who was going to take care of the child?
Now, what might be an incentive for anyone to become a foster parent? Say you have four kids and an already full house at home, but you think maybe you can take on just one more kid. Maybe your incentive is you want to help young lives around you…
Or maybe it’s because of the money. That’s right you heard me. Foster parents don’t typically “make money” in the traditional sense, but instead receive a stipend per child to help cover for the cost of caring for them. This varies, depending on the child’s age, special needs, and in the state you live in. Usually ranging from around $20 to $25 per day for regular foster care, with specialized care paying more.
Do you think that all foster care homes are joyous and loving filled? As unfortunate as it is to tell you, you may be very wrong. Hundreds and upon hundreds of kids have given testimonies about foster homes that were abusive in all ways. Testimonies have been taken, and not even all foster homes are good places to stay. Many kids, specifically more girls (and teens) in the 11 to 16-year-old range have been sexually harassed, verbally abused, and neglected in their foster homes. How crazy is this? How can a child trust the world around them when everything seems to be falling apart all the time?
In 1996 an estimated five hundred fifty-nine thousand children were in the foster care system on the last day of that year. In 2021 the data shows a 30% increase. With roughly Three hundred ninety-one thousand, ninety-eight kids in the system.
From 2012 to 2021 an average number of kids in foster care in the single day was four hundred fourteen thousand, eight hundred sixty-three.
That’s four hundred fourteen thousand, eight hundred sixty-three children without a proper home.
The ratio of regular kids to kids who are in the system is 3 foster’s to 1,000 regulars. Now I know what you’re thinking, 3 to 1000? That is a very, very small number. But how many children are in the US as of 2023? Seventy-three million, six hundred two thousand, seven hundred fifty-three, which is 22% of the country’s population. Over six hundred thousand kids annually are in the foster care system.
How can we stop these numbers, or at least encourage them to decrease? Proverbs 13:24 says “Behold children are heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb, a reward.” Even if a child cannot stay in their own home, we, as the believers of Christ, can aid and help them give these gifts of the Lord a better world to live in. Psalm 12:73 says, “Children are gifts from the Lord. They are a reward from him.” They are a reward. Even if you apply for short term foster care, who knows maybe you will have a wonderful outcome like my family did when Travis entered our home -which by the way, he is now adopted and with a wonderful family and has a sister and two dogs and two loving parents.
If people become more aware of the foster care system, they are more likely to feel compelled to support and help.
If people feel more compelled to support and help foster children, more kids can experience stable and loving homes.
Therefore, if people come more aware of the foster care system, more foster care children can experience stable and loving homes.
The foster care system is greatly overshadowed today in society. The hot topic these days is the election… abortion… immigration… But what about the very children in our own country who can’t even stay in their own homes? Just a little bit of trust from the world around them can help kids who might be deemed for the foster care system or even in it right now feel a little safer. Help bring awareness to a world around us.
Thank you.