Foster Care UnFair (3)

Rosie O'Donnel has a new movie coming out about Foster Care. This is a tough subject, but it is a reality. The State of Texas has a Foster Program. They have a Foster to Adopt Program and, of course, they have an Adoption Program.

In the State of Texas the number one goal of Child Protective Services (CPS) is reunification. In placement of a child, the first choice is the biological parents. Second choice is the biological extended family. Third choice is anyone who can demonstrate a healthy, long term relationship with the child (perhaps a neighbor, babysitter, teacher, minister....). The last choice is waiting adoptive parents. Thus the Foster Care system exists to facilitate the reunification of families by offering help to parents and their children.

In a perfect world this is a great system placing children in homes and not institutions. In a perfect world, foster care is a great solution to a short term problem. In reality, foster care is being extended too long and giving parents who have no intention of reunifying too much power to prevent children from being available for adoption.

Biological parents, fit or unfit, are given every chance to reclaim custody of their child. The State offers services such as job training, food stamps, and much more to help biological parents fulfill their requirements to reclaim their child. All the biological parents have to do is demonstrate a desire for reunification and their child will never be available for adoption. To demonstrate a desire the parent only needs to show up once every now and then. If they show up once, they can delay the court hearing to terminate their parental rights another year. Biological parents are never required to finish their services and they can effectively keep their child in foster care until they age out at age 18, and that is the major down side to the program.

It is true that sometimes a series of bad decisions and/or series of unfortunate events, a parent needs help getting out of hole and it may take a couple of years. That is where the State's program works. Unfortunately, there are a number of people who have dug a hole that they have no intention of getting out of. They have found comfort and appreciate the familiarity of their difficulty and will never be able to parent their children. This is where the State program fails. If a parent lives snuggled deep into their addiction or tragedy, there needs to be a way to identify that parent and have a schedule to get their child off the foster care register and onto the adoption waiting list. There needs to be a deadline for these parent's to complete their services. They need to be required to finish their program. It is completely unfair to the child to be left in Foster Care for 5, 10, 15, 18 years.

I have no answers but the more people that are aware of the issues, the more minds pondering the issues, perhaps the next ingenious idea on how to fix or at least improve Foster Care will come sooner than later.

Rosie O'Donnel's new movie is called "America" and will be shown on Lifetime on Feb. 28 at 9 pm, March 1 at 8 pm and March 3 at 8 pm (et/pt). The movie is based on the book "America" by E.R. Frank. For more about the movie and book go to Lifetime: http://www.mylifetime.com/on-tv/movies/america