In yesterday's post, I talked about older children in foster care, and I would like to continue with that theme now. Older children are harder to place for appropriate foster homes and adoptive homes. This is not because they are “bad” children, but because the majority of the population seems to not understand these children. You hear people say “I didn’t act like that when I was that age” or “What is wrong with these kids today?”.

“Expect me to do or say some really crazy things,
just to see if you can handle it.
How do I feel safe until I know that there’s nothing I can do to
make you leave me? I will test you.
I am an expert at testing people.
I desperately want you to pass. But I expect you to fail.”
– foster teen waiting for a family

There is nothing wrong with the kids, there is something wrong with us as a society in how we deal with our children and each other. Addiction, abuse, drugs, neglect, alcohol, …it’s all catching up with us. The patterns of abuse and addiction have become so routine that nobody seems to notice.

Foster children expect the worst, and are usually not disappointed. There are those few who are strong enough to overcome their situation, but many do not. There have been studies about older children and how they fare when they age out (emancipate) of the system. These studies document that many leave care homeless, incarcerated, and physically and mentally ill. And many of them wish they had been adopted. (Collins, 2001; McDonald et al.,1996; Courtney et al., 2004; Courtney et al., 2001).


According to another study, there is a 12% drop in the odds of permanence for each year a foster child is in care (Kemp & Bodonyi, 2002). So, the older you are, or the older you get while in care, the less chance you have of finding a caring adult to support you. This is very unfortunate, as there are many wonderful older foster children out there just waiting for someone to care.

Check out fosterclub.com, and listen to what these kids are saying, and support them in their own efforts to change the system. And visit the teen adoption group on yahoo and do the same. It only takes one caring adult to change the life of child, and you may be that one person…