L2P Foster Care

Coming from a stable white family living outside of Detroit having no personal experience with the foster care system I realize its issues whether the issues be with discrimination improper help etc. the foster care system is broken. Did you know that about one out of every 5 kids in foster care has some form of mental disorder whether it be social or educational. To top this off only about half of theses children receive help. There is also discrimination in the system some examples are 40% of all foster kids are African-American and 70% are boys. This ties into my second idea of how only one category of kids are being adopted and that's white infants where there is literally a line of people waiting for white babies while thousands of other kids aren't even considered.

I will begin with the issue of mental disorders many of these coming from either abuse from family or friends or neglect or even just a lack of family in the first place. In 2008 researchers at conducted an experiment that found “ out of some 100,000 kids in foster care about 18% have some sort of mental disorder 62% of these kids are 6 or older” according to Lois Romano from Hearst Communications. That's 18,000 kids and almost half are preschoolers or younger. Many of them coming from abusive homes There has been quotes from girls asking who they had to have sex with to get out of the foster care system because that was the way they were raised. There is also other disorders such as anxiety disorder and are depressed. To top that off only about half of these kids will receive mental help. This is an issue to society to a whole because that's 9,000 kids who have not received mental help and are bound to either be in jail or end up in poverty. This is also morally wrong in the sense that if they would have had parents they could have easily received help but now that they don't have parents they don't receive help over something they can't control them not being able to control this ties into my second idea of how they can't help gender or race but still are given disadvantages.

There is an “Issue of discrimination in the foster care system” says HRC girls have a higher adoption rate and white girls are offered more adoption chances whether it be they go to a meeting of sorts where parents looking to adopt are looking for kids. A group of researchers that work for Hearst found shocking results “about 70% of all foster kids are boys and about 40% are African American” according to Amy Engeler from Hearst Communications that’s out of about 100,000 kids that 70,000 boys and 40,000 African Americans those numbers are astounding. This causes many issues in the system such as unfair adoption and it just overall hurts the kid's confidence knowing that if you are a boy if you're black you automatically have a smaller chance of getting adopted than say a white girl. This is an issue because as these kids lose hope many of them turn to drugs or end up in jail for various crimes did you know in Connecticut it is said that 75% of people in prison were foster kids and did you know that 45% of people who grow out of the foster care system are homeless within a year. This shows how much of an issue this can be if these children are treated unfairly in adoptions because many turn to drugs end up homeless or in jail. This helps support my third idea of how small groups are adopting very specific groups of kids because of these older children black, white, boy or girl are all at a loss.

My third idea helps tie everything together in the sense that the majority of adopters are white families and most of which are looking for are white infants so they can treat the children like their own. “They just aren’t looking for much else,” says Richard Quigley in an article by Atlantic Company. They referring to white families aren’t looking for older kids and definitely not from other ethnicities. This is an issue because it is trapping all older kids and all minorities into this foster care system that when they get out of it end up in jail or homeless as shown in my second paragraph. This is one of the main issues because if this is fixed it can fix many other issues in the foster care system like the segregation.

In conclusion, the mental problems, the discrimination, and the closed-mindedness of some adopting families have broken our foster care system. So some ways that you the president can fix this is encouraging families to adopt through events and at these events promote older kids and minorities because young kids can grow up but you can't get younger. Some ways to get these events going is to provide more government funding to the foster care system that will be evenly distributed among all homes and children fairly. I hope you have realized the gravity of the foster care system and will make a change.