Top 10 Reason Children Enter Foster Care

Many people outside the world of the foster care system seem to think that only "BAD" parents have their children taken from them; usually temporarily and sometimes permanently.  Before I became a foster parent I was quick to assume why someone had "lost" a child to the system.  Since I started fostering children I am shocked at how off base I really was..

The top 10 reasons for a child being removed are.

1.  Physical Abuse

2.  Sexual Abuse

3.  Neglect

4.  Medical Neglect

5.   Incarceration

6.   Abandonment

7.   Truancy

8.   Death

9.   Voluntarily placed

10. Juvenile Offender

I never thought about the death of a parent being the cause of a child entering the foster care system, nor did I ever think about a parent voluntarily placing a child in the system. Truth is, these situations happen often.

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It is a well-known fact in the foster community that older children are harder to place; some are in care to no fault of their own and others are juvenile offenders whose parents could no longer deal with the child's needs.

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As a foster parent is my job to provide a safe, loving environment for the children until they can go home or find their forever homes. At times this is way easier said than done, there is no magic pill, no answer to every question. Some days I want to rip my hair out and hide in the bathroom with a bottle of wine. Other days I am so proud of the leaps forward my foster children have made it reminds me why I do what I do.

In one of my foster care communities I reached out to see what topics they thought non foster parents should know. Best Answer: "I think that people too often believe that kids are in foster care because the parents don't want or love them. Most of the bios I have dealt with truly love their kids but simply lack the skills (or sometimes the motivation) to care them properly".

So, which is it? Lack of skills or lack of love?? What can we as a community do to help provide parents with better skills to cope and proper resources to keep or reunite children with their families ?

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