Foster Parent Research Paper

Approximately 391,098 children were in foster care as of 2021. USA Facts - "The World" Some are fortunate their foster parents love and care for them as biological parents would. However, others get placed in homes where the attention given to them is sparse, and the guardians are ill-equipped to handle the child's struggles. The requirements to be a foster parent must hone in on the minor details. Some of the requirements should be stricter or have rigorous guidelines. One guideline that should be more thoroughly reviewed is the criminal background checks conducted before a child is placed in the home. Rick Hazel, an ex-foster father, had 70 kids in and out of his home. The house was beyond capacity, and the children in his care were sexually …show more content…
In other words, Hazel had several criminal charges against him, but he was still allowed to have custody of children already traumatized from previous situations. Brittney Hines Clark went through several traumatic experiences as a child in the system. She moved from several different houses because of the abuse she faced from her foster parents. “During my time in that home, I was physically and sexually manipulated. I even was put in the home of a different member of that family so that the foster parent would continue getting paid.”(Clark). The phrase demonstrates how carelessly Clark's foster parents were chosen. If her foster parents had undergone more extensive checks, it could have prevented what Clark went through. Some sources say that the required ten-hour training is plenty, and you can use all the necessary resources. How is it possible to cover everything regarding caring for a child in such a short amount of …show more content…
Mia Storm, an adult who went through severe abuse in the foster system, states, “The damage that the system did to me I will never recover from. I will never get back the last 14 years,” Consequently, she was severely neglected, abused, and traumatized by her foster parents. She claims to have been locked in rooms, punched in the face, and put on several unnecessary medications (Freidman, Hass). Her experience was all because of the lack of precision when training and choosing appropriate foster parents. Training to care for a child should last for more than 10 hours and be ongoing throughout the time of fostering. It should go into depth on how to best support the foster child. Finally, the age minimum for foster parents should be raised. As of right now, you must be 21 to foster a child. Doctors have said that the ages of late twenties to mid-thirties is the best time to have children (Watson). Also, another source states that the brain is not fully developed until the mid to late twenties

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