Dear Next President,

I am a student at West Albany High School and I believe that the foster care system is failing in their duties in respect to the way the kids are being treated. Did you know that 264,746 children entered foster care in 2014? That means a child was entering the system every two minutes in the United States, according to the fosterclub.com. Fosterclub.com also says, “46% of foster care homes are provided by non relatives and one in five children will be homeless after being let out of the system." The foster care system has to be reworked because there have been reports of neglect in the system.

Many kids in America are being neglected and not adopted. Of the almost 400,000 kids in foster care, about 100,000 are available for adoption, cited from adoptuskids.org. As Nelson Mandela once said, “there can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” This relates to neglect in the foster care system because people are taking advantage of the kids in their home for money. One reason is the reimbursement they get for housing the kids. There are different methods to get paid back but one of the more common ones is monthly reimbursement where they get paid at the end of the month for the previous month. This is a problem because many foster parents are only taking on that responsibility for their own financial gain.

With financial gain also come the cases of abuse. Children are often times hungry, and forced to eat dog food while sleeping in horrible conditions. Two sisters were placed together in Miami; one sister would chew up a piece of chicken to feed her baby sister and then would be punished. Then her head would be held under the water in the sink. The oldest sister would stay up at night until the others would go to bed in hopes that the boy in her house wouldn’t come into the room, cited from an article on NBCmiami.com. Along with stories like these come stories from foster parents about the behavior of the children in their homes. Children are then moved out and taken to another foster home, and the cycle continues. This is why the foster care laws need to be more strict.

Too many children bounce from home to home for their entire lives. Making better laws and standards would only help the situation in hopes of producing more successful foster care stories. Currently, the laws are put into place in order to find strong, nurturing families who can assist the needs of these children. This is not always the case and many are there for the paycheck. There must be better standards in order to protect the children and give them a voice. Tightening the standards would also deter those who are not suitable for being a foster parent.

As President, it is necessary for you to look at the foster care system and change the standards in order to protect our children. According to adoptuskids.org, research suggests that when siblings are placed in the same foster home they will experience fewer moves, and many emotional benefits.This means they have a better chance at a successful adoption. Everyone deserves a happy life. Stated from an article on childwelfare.gov, if neglect is reported by a mandatory reporter it then goes to child protective services where the story is screened , and investigated, or it is set aside if there is too little information. I believe no story should go unheard. I know you have the power to make a difference and set a higher standard for foster parents and ensure the safety of the children in America.

Sincerely,

Riley R.