Starik Publishing will have a booth at the Texas state foster parent conference in San Antonio this week. I will be working at this booth if anyone is in the area, drop by. This should be a great conference and is an excellent opportunity for Texas foster parents to fulfill all the required training hours. If you’re not in Texas, check out your local state conferences. They usually offer a wealth of information and an opportunity to connect with others.
The appeals court ruled to return the more than 400 children recently placed in foster care from the Yearning For Zion Ranch a few weeks ago. The Texas CPS system has been under attack for some time as a result of the poor treatment of children in its care. This ruling furthers the belief of many that the system is overstepping its bounds and causing more harm than good. In some cases harm has come to the children in care as a direct result of their placement in substandard homes. In other cases, it is more difficult to determine whether CPS is right or wrong. Is it better to leave a child in a possible harmful situation while awaiting proof or to remove them immediately and later return the child to the home when no proof is found? It is easy to say, a child should be left in the home until proof is found, but what happens if the child is further harmed during that time of waiting. In that case, it would have been better for the child to have been removed from their home immediately. The problem is, we do not know always know which is better. CPS is run by humans who have the same problem. They do not always know whether the child is better off being left in the home or removed, so they have to make an educated guess. Sometimes they guess correctly, sometimes they do not. So, is CPS doing more harm or more good for the children in the state of Texas?
In the U.S. there are approximately 500,000 children in foster care. There are nearly 130,000 children waiting for adoption. This is an overwhelming number of children. The state of Texas has had more children in care than it can handle in recent years causing a lot of difficulties with overworked caseworkers, lack of funds, and poor care for these children. With the recent addition of more than 400 children, the state foster care system is operating beyond capacity. There is a serious need for new foster parents in Texas as well as throughout the United States. Unfortunately, there are not enough interested, qualified people to fill that need. Those of us who are working or who have worked in the foster care system need to spread the word about being a foster parent. We need to let others know that they can become foster parents and that the children in care really need their help. These children need loving homes to take them in either temporarily or permanently. Please help spread the word about how to help these children.
This blog is written by the author of Foster Parenting: A Simple Guide to Understanding What It’s All About, Stacie Craig. Here you will find important issues concerning foster parenting and other information relevant to Stacie and her book. You can also use this category to ask Stacie questions.