I respect anyone who is willing to take on these risks. I cannot imagine going through many of the things that you describe.

- Faith

I have had similar experiences also with foster children, such as having to defend my child on crutches from a foster child physically attacking them; locking themselves in a bathroom and intentionally flooding my home; destroying my bedroom furniture; ripping items off the walls; stealing our money and our childrens clothes; smoking marijuana in my home and denying it, etc. My children asked for locks to their bedrooms. We caught the foster child coming back into the house through the windows at night, other times we would catch them out of the house accidentally, after midnight. We could never let our guard down, never relax, stress constantly. You want to try to help these kids, but the foster kids look at foster care as if no one will confront their behavior. Sadly, I've found it to be true. The law gives these kids more power in your home than you have, and they do nothing to support the you, nor control their kids. Our foster child told us "No one was going to do anything to him" to hold him accountable, and they didn't. We saw it for ourselves. Your household gets turned upside down and no one cares. And yes, our kids do suffer. They say it's your job.

It's sad that you put your own children in danger like that Lanette. Many biological parents have lost their kids to the state for less.

Patism

No, it is sad some biological parents like you who do not care for their children and help other biological parents beat the system so they can continue to putting themselves before their children. If you and other biological parents would be the parents that your children need, then I would not have to care for them.

I guess the other solution instead of placing foster children in foster homes is placing them in large institutions kind of like juvenile detention centers. Sadly, the biological parents would not be the ones hurting, it would be the children.

Messes are created by irresponsible parenting leaving foster parents, courts, caseworkers, jails, therapists, and society to pick up the pieces and clean the messes left behind by biological parents.

These foster children acted this way because of what they endured at the hands of their biological parents. Do not go around blaming others for you losing your children.

Here are a few blogs that should help you understand what is going on.

http://foster-care.adoptionblogs.com/index.php/weblogs/taking-responsibility-biological

http://foster-care.adoptionblogs.com/index.php/weblogs/taking-responsibility-cold-hard-truth

Lanette

I'm sure that in real life you are nothing but a well meaning sweetheart. But you are minimizing and denying the horrible reality of the system as a whole.

I also think that the term you use "bio-parents" is dehumanizing. These children have and are a part of families as imperfect as they may be. And a mom who has her child taken away, for whatever reason legitimate or not is also a human being, there are lots of Mom's out there who are fighting tooth and nail for their kids, who have done everything asked of them, but we have workers who are never satisfied, supervisors who are more interested in career advancement then the well being of the children, doctors, lawyers, social workers, GAL's and shrinks with their hands out getting a cut of all the money spent to keep a kid in foster care. It comes out to thousands of dollars a year per child.

On the other end of it we have what you call "bio-parents" being forced to jump through more and more hoops because nothing is ever good enough once a case has been opened. We have kids on heavy mixtures of psychiatric meds, simply because the people who supposedly "Stand By Them" can't handle them, and for whatever reason they're acting out, you can't even admit that the Foster care system could possibly have anything to do with it. So in the meantime, you and the other foster parents are told a whole different story by the workers in charge of the kids who come into your home. Never the whole truth, as you say in one of your most recent posts…

“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.” (Choses has two o’s btw.)

You are also really good at belittling people especially bio-parents. Ie "Responses to other comments" etc. Look at how you've tried to handle me. In your own words, "some biological parents like you who do not care for their children." Sounds pretty anti-bio-parent to me. But hey, believing that probably helps you sleep at night, huh.

I get a kick out of how defensive of your position you are. You shouldn't let people like me bother you. You’re to holier then thou for that.

Lanette I am with you on this!


I have to say, Patism that if you lost your children you have no business attacking a foster parent. Our role is to be serogate parents to these kids. They were taken away for a reason. And if you look at it, if the biological parents (I don't want you to feel dehumanized) cared for their children and did what was best for their children, then their children would not be in foster care. I had a child for 6 months and this was his 3rd time in foster care. Does that show you that his biological parents cared about him? Or what about the 13 year old that we had whose parental rights were terminated when he was 3? The biological parents don't have their children because they don't care enough to put their children first. Besides, if that was your daughter who was threatening physical harm towards other people she is doing it because that's how she was raised or because of some unspeakable incident that happened to her.

You think that this woman is belittling you and you are pointing out all of her spelling mistakes.

I will quote you now:
"...but we have workers who are never satisfied, supervisors who are more interested in career advancement then the well being of the children, doctors, lawyers, social workers, GAL's and shrinks with their hands out getting a cut of all the money..."

We as foster parents are given money to take care of these children but it is only to take care of these children. Foster kids come to us with little or nothing and if the bio-parents aren't providing for the kids then someone has to. We are being "paid" to do a job. The therapists and doctors and lawyers aren't getting a cut of the money. There's not a conspiracy to take kids away. Kids get a medical card which doesn't pay the doctors a whole lot which is why there aren't a lot of doctors that we can see to get the kids healthy.

Your anger is misplaced with this woman who is venting her frustrations to fellow foster parents. Why is it that you are here?

I enjoy being a foster parent but some agencies are so desperate to place a child in a home that they lie and mislead and mistreat us just to get us to take the children in. We are in the process of transferring to another agency because of how mistreated we have been.

You think it's rough having your kids taken away - try being a foster parent and taking the brunt of everyone's anger. It's not our fault that your kids were taken away it's yours. So before you start attacking us for your misfortune please take a look at yourself and realize that the "hoops" you are jumping through are necessary so that your children don't get taken from you again. If you have to keep jumping through hoops that just means that you aren't doing your job as a parent.

And it is not us putting our children in danger it is the foster care system. They lie to us and tell us what wonderful children these are and we don't find out the issues until later. Then if we want to have the kids moved if we can't handle it it takes two weeks to have them moved. You have no idea what we go through for these kids and if you did half as much as we do you may get your kids back some day!