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There have been some violent and aggressive foster children placed in my home not necessarily by choice. That is something that happens probably on a daily basis to a lot of foster parents. Foster parents do not go asking for violent, aggressive or dangerous foster children. I have not heard from one foster parent that has asked for a foster child that would demolish their home, a child that would harm another child, or to be assaulted in their own home.
In a lot of cases foster parents are not given any, or the needed information on a potential foster child being placed into their homes. At times Child Welfare choses not to be honest and up front with the foster parents because they know they will not find a foster home willing to take the foster child in some cases. This is completely wrong and is knowingly putting the foster family (including their children) and other foster children in the home at risk. There should be accountably without a doubt.
Then there is the problem of the biological parents not giving any, or wrong information concerning their children being placed in foster care. Children come into foster care without people knowing their medical conditions and/or needed medications because biological parents do not provide this information. I personally have dealt with this and the biological mother did not help a bit. I had to call her old school nurse to find what medications and conditions this foster child had. The biological mother refused to provide her daughter’s medications. Some of the biological parents do not disclose the behaviors, mental issues or any other problems these children are dealing with.
Some foster children are just unable to handle what has happened to them or allowed to let happen to them by their biological parents. Some children act out because they do not know how to act or what to do with all of the turmoil they are feeling. While other foster children suffer major mental issues and in some case even psychotic breakdowns because of the abuse and other things they have endured at the hands of the people that are suppose to love them more than anything and protect them.
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More reading:
Taking Responsibility – Inside a Foster Home
What? People aren’t honest? I am shocked! LOL
Great blog!
We are in this situation now. We’ve tried our best with a 15 year old boy placed in our home for the last 3 months… only now finding out the full extent of his problems with bipolar disorder, odd and more. We’ve never turned away a child before and feel terrible but the rages and aggression are just too much for our family to take. I worry about what this will do to him and wish we’d had all the facts up front.
It really is a wonder that foster parents don’t have full access to all of the information during placement. The minute you become the potential adoptive parent you find out EVERYTHING, but not before.
We too have had placements where they should have told us what the issues were from the beginning. It would have made life so much easier to just know what we were dealing with. Turned out we weren’t the crazy ones.
Tim
http://fosterpodcast.wordpress.com