Imagine what happens to foster kids who age out.
Imagine applying for jobs at 17, knowing that you’ll need to support yourself, and then trying to figure out whether putting down the group home as your “permanent address” is a smart idea or not. (About a third of girls who age out end up pregnant quickly, another third will end up in sex work.)
Something like half of homeless people were in the foster care system. The foster care system in the United States is disgusting - group home positions are poorly paid and unpleasant, which incentivizes the wrong kind of people to want to work in them. “Troubled teens” are vulnerable to all kinds of extra abuse - look up what was happening with cops and kids at the Tulsa juvie last year.
These are people who have never been loved. People who were put through the meat grinder of the human soul that is DHS care, were thrown out on the street and told to figure it out.
There’s a reason why the US refused to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Seeing the way DHS and foster works has been a “black pill” for me. There’s a wider attitude that children are the property of their parents in their states (see the endless conversations about “parent rights” - eg, denying children education and medical care). Children whose parents have rejected them are basically dumped into a lost and found, have no value, have no voice.
I’ve talked to social workers where they had to place kids in homeless shelters because there were no available beds. Kids sleep in DHS offices. DHS can’t be assed to make sure kids’ shit gets from place to place - I’ve bought multiple children clothes because they went inpatient with basically nothing.
Imagine what happens to foster kids who age out. Imagine applying for jobs at 17, knowing that you’ll need to support yourself, and then trying to figure out whether putting down the group home as your “permanent address” is a smart idea or not. (About a third of girls who age out end up pregnant quickly, another third will end up in sex work.)
Something like half of homeless people were in the foster care system. The foster care system in the United States is disgusting - group home positions are poorly paid and unpleasant, which incentivizes the wrong kind of people to want to work in them. “Troubled teens” are vulnerable to all kinds of extra abuse - look up what was happening with cops and kids at the Tulsa juvie last year.
These are people who have never been loved. People who were put through the meat grinder of the human soul that is DHS care, were thrown out on the street and told to figure it out.
When I wrote my statement, I wasn’t even thinking about foster care kids.
Horrifying.
Thank you for the information.
There’s a reason why the US refused to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Seeing the way DHS and foster works has been a “black pill” for me. There’s a wider attitude that children are the property of their parents in their states (see the endless conversations about “parent rights” - eg, denying children education and medical care). Children whose parents have rejected them are basically dumped into a lost and found, have no value, have no voice.
I’ve talked to social workers where they had to place kids in homeless shelters because there were no available beds. Kids sleep in DHS offices. DHS can’t be assed to make sure kids’ shit gets from place to place - I’ve bought multiple children clothes because they went inpatient with basically nothing.