Foster
Care Children are Worse Off than Children in Troubled Homes – The Child
Trafficking Business
by Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News Editor
Health Impact News Editor
Children taken away from
troubled families and put into foster care do not do as well as children
left in troubled homes. This fact is not even in dispute. So why does the
current system still exist, when it is clearly destroying the lives of so many
children?
Studies
Show Children are Worse Off in Foster Care
There have been numerous reports
published over the past several years that clearly show the current foster care
system is an abysmal failure. Children who stay with parents who are accused
(but not arrested or convicted) of “abuse” or “neglect” clearly do better than
most of the children being put into foster care.
In 2007 Joseph Doyle, an
economics professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, published a
study which tracked at least 15,000 kids from 1990 to 2002. It was the
largest study of its kind at that time.
USA Today ran a story on the
report – Study: Troubled homes better than
foster care. Here are some excerpts:
Children whose families are
investigated for abuse or neglect are likely to do better in life if they stay
with their families than if they go into foster care, according to a pioneering
study. Kids who stayed with their families were less likely to become
juvenile delinquents or teen mothers and more likely to hold jobs as young
adults.
Doyle’s study…. provides “the first
viable, empirical evidence” of the benefits of keeping kids with their
families, says Gary Stangler, executive director of the Jim Casey Youth
Opportunities Initiative, a foundation for foster teens. Stangler says it
looked at kids over a longer period of time than had other studies. “It
confirms what experience and observation tell us: Kids who can remain in their
homes do better than in foster care,” says Stangler.
Read the full study here.
Joseph Doyle did another study, one
year later in 2008, comparing children left in troubled homes with foster care
children to see which group was more likely to be arrested as adults. The study
looked at 23,000 children, and it found that “children placed in foster care
have arrest, conviction, and imprisonment rates as adults that are three
times higher than those of children who remained at home.” Read the full study here.
Why
Is This Failed System Allowed to Continue?
In his 2007 study, Joseph Doyle
gives clear evidence as to why the foster care system is still in existence,
even with such abysmal results:
Although foster care is meant to be
a temporary arrangement, children stay in care for an average of two
years, and there are currently over 500,000 children in care (US
Department of Health and Human Services 2005). Roughly 60
percent of foster children return home; 15 percent are adopted; and the
remainder “age out” of foster care (Fred C. Wulczyn, Kristen
Brunner Hislop, and Robert M. Goerge 2000). Three quarters of these
children live with substitute families, one-third of which are headed by
relatives of the children. These families are paid a subsidy of
approximately $400 per month per child (Child Welfare League of America
1999), and states spend over $20 billion each year to administer
these child protective services (Roseana Bess et al. 2002).
The foster care system is a $20
billion taxpayer funded business, employing tens of thousands of people in the
United States. Do we really expect government employees, which include not only
social service workers but juvenile and family court judges and employees, to
advocate putting themselves out of a job?
What
is the Solution?
There is only one solution, since
the system is so corrupt and beyond reform: Abolish it.
All federal funding for foster care
and adoption should immediately be abolished. Let local law enforcement arrest
and prosecute criminal parents the same as any other suspected criminal, rather
than incarcerating the alleged victims by kidnapping them. Criminal parents are
the ones who should be removed from homes, not innocent children.
Without the more than $20 billion in
federal funding used for trafficking children, far fewer children will be taken
from their homes. In cases where parents are removed with due process of law,
the incentives in local communities would be to place the children with
relatives, rather than the State. For the very few remaining children who have
had their parents incarcerated and have no relatives, local communities can
develop their own programs without federal funding, which would include
adoption to parents who can afford to take care of children without the aid of
federal funds.
It is time the American tax payer
stops funding the U.S. child trafficking business, which is nothing more than a
modern-day form of slavery.
For those just being introduced to
the topic of medical kidnapping and child trafficking via foster care for the
first time, and having doubts that this is real, or thinking that we are
exaggerating the problem, please review these previous articles where former
CPS whistleblowers explain how this is in fact happening
The International
Criminal Court for Crimes against Humanity
Canadian media; do not incriminate the parents
for the behavior of children and youth, as well as for their destructive
actions in society. Make accountable to the
government and its institutions, because they are the ones who dictate,
approve, and practice day to day criminal policies especially in children of
the primary schools.
In front of the Ontario legislative building, at Queens Park, on Monday
was a "Rally 4 Accountability" to have the Ontario Ombudsman oversee the
Children's Aid Society.
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