Each year the foster care system receives roughly a huge number of children and every year that number increases. Currently there are over 500,000 children in the United States who are in foster care. Children who are taken into foster care have encountered abuse and neglect in home situations where they are removed from the parent’s home.
Yet, so many children who are in foster care still experience problems. African-American children make up two-thirds of the population of foster children. They end up remaining in the system longer than any other race. Many of the children enter foster care with emotional, behavioral and developmental problems. Most of the children end up blaming themselves or feeling guilty about the removal from their parents, feeling unwanted if they’re waiting for adoption, and even end up having mixed emotions about attaching to foster parents.
Another problem in the foster care system is the lack of foster parents. In recent years, there has been a lack of foster parents available to care for the children. Since the lack of foster parents, a great number of children remain in group homes or institutional settings. Those who do become foster parents encounter many challenges, such as, dealing with the child’s emotions and behaviors and dealing with the complex needs of children in their care.
Children in the system will also experience more neglect and abuse. Country wide, there have been multiple court cases about the neglect and abuse. Bogutz v. Arizona was a lawsuit filed in July 1994 which indicated that over 500 out of an estimated 4,000 foster children that were in the state’s care had been sexually abused. Unfortunately, sexual abuse in the foster care system is still being unheard and sometimes the cases remain unsolved.
Sadly enough, the problems faced in foster care have yet to be resolved. The problems in foster care are ones that need to be solved once they happen rather than when it’s too late. Foster children need all of the help they can get while they either wait for adoption or they go back to their biological parents. Hopefully in the near future these problems will decrease and will no longer exist in the foster care system.