Inside Out: Foster Care Reform - Documented Abuses
Part 2: Documented Abuses The basic question is: why are we removing any children, when foster care-related child neglect and abuse are being reported from all over the country? Each day we read in some newspaper of yet anotherinvestigation of child abuse in foster care.
A recent
TIME Magazine article references a troubling report commissionedby the Reagan Administration in the late 1980s, which concluded:
"Foster care is intended to protect children from neglect and abuse at the hands of parents and other family members, yet all too often it becomes anequally cruel form of neglect and abuse by the state."
In California, two Grand Juries in San Diego County would echo these concerns, concluding:
"Professionals working in the field of child abuse voiced strong concerns that the children removed from abusive homes werebeing abused again by a system designed to protect them."
A Santa Clara County Grand Jury would reach a similar conclusion, having determined that children often face greater risks in its existing foster care program than they do in their own homes:
"Sometimes, foster care placements are made that are just as abusive, if notmore so, than the home from which the child was removed. The Grand Jurylearned of placements where sexual and physical abuse took place. There waseven a case where the infant died."
In Washington State, a Governor's blue-ribbon task force concluded:
"The effect of our present foster care system is disastrous. Children are moved from one foster home to another, their school attendance is disruptedand health care needs often go unmet. They are sometimes exposed to abuse by other children in care."
Elsewhere, a report by the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services determined that the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services
"has no assurance that the quality ofcare being given to foster children placed by child-placing agencies wasadequate." Federal reviewers found "many cases" of children "in potentiallyharmful situations."
- At least one fire or health deficiency was found in 40of the 48 homes reviewed.
- In 28 of the 48 homes, no record could be found toprove that required criminal background checks had been made.
- The reportdescribed some foster homes as filled with trash.
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