ixtlilton4

[ixtlilton4]

The Place of Religious Charities and Homes in Foster Care (3/3)

The other problem with an organisation which forces children to go to church is the kind of ideas they get exposed to in those environments with no oversight. We had two workers, a couple, who outright told us (the foster kids, who were young girls and teenage girls) that there were some jobs- namely politics, doctors etc - that just "shouldn't be done by women". They also were just plain stupid and mocked one of the girls for "believing" in dinosaurs, so there's that. Since we were also forced to go to a bunch of random churches, there was plenty of sexist rhetoric to go around. I distinctly remember going to one church where the preacher got up, got really into his sermon, and said "women are *under* their husbands. They *obey* their husbands. That means, if I say "woman, go get me my shoes" that means you better go get me my shoes". Just horrible shit like that on a regular basis. In what world is this an okay thing to expose young girls to?

They also blatantly disregarded laws put in place specifically to keep children safe. See, in my state at least, you cannot take a photo of a foster child without explicit permission from their legal guardian (state/social worker). Why? Because many children in foster care have been victims of human trafficking. Other children have been victim of violent crimes, or severe domestic violence. By taking a picture, and then posting it, if the right person stumbles across that photo, you've just given them a general idea of who the child is with, and where they are. This can and has resulted in children being re-accessed (being forced back into human trafficking) or them or their caretakers being physically assaulted or harassed. The rule exists for a reason. Despite this, while I was at this group home, we were regularly forced to do group photos just so the church group could have a nice picture to put on their facebook page. In one instance, we were forced to sing in front a giant mega-church on tv. Isn't that great?

[ixtlilton4]

The Place of Religious Charities and Homes in Foster Care (2/3)

Most of the time, as I said, these people have no training or even awareness of these issues. To them, this is a purely evangelical pursuit. To them, they are bringing Jesus to hurt kids and through Jesus everything will be healed. And while many kids and adults find religion a useful tool to contextualise their abuse, other people, like me as a kid and now as an adult, find it to be the opposite. Both of these responses are fine, and both should be accommodated for. I should not have had to stand in a Church or a meeting hall because other children *might* find it helpful. Another child shouldn't be forced to stay at home and not interact with their religion because I *might* have a bad reaction to it. It is not an exceptionally hard problem to solve. But, onto Christian group homes. I'll be brutally honest here: shouldn't exist. I know people argue that they provide a service and they say "well, if they don't bring religious content into it..." but they do. Any organisation centred around an evangelical intent cannot be trusted not to follow through on that intent. And besides that, allowing private organisations license to house and care for foster children creates serious issues. Firstly, if the state isn't vetting the people being staffed, that means their training falls to the organisation, which, as I have discussed, isn't exactly a priority in people who see Christianity as the only path to salvation or healing. That means you have the same situation I described above, except now it's worse because they aren't people you have to put up with for a day and never see again, instead they're people who are supposed to be your caretakers 24/7, 2 weeks a month. Also, because they're ran by Christian organisations and staff themselves, that means the staff are going to be Christians who fit their beliefs. That means even when you say "okay, they can care for children as long as they don't press their beliefs" you are setting up a situation where, say, a Baptist organisation hires exclusively Baptists they agree with to staff homes. What happens in the chain of command when one of the staff breaks this rule? Do you think it is actually addressed? It isn't. I'm also not talking hypotheticals here. I am speaking from my own experiencing of living at Baptist Children's Home of North Carolina for ~4 years. In this group home, under this organisation, I was forced to attend church services, religious events, and yelled at or punished by the staff if I resisted or complained. But this isn't just me being jaded about being forced to go to church. The staff who worked there had absolutely no business working with any children, especially not vulnerable, traumatised children. Because- again- they had next to no training except the bare minimum legally required. They did not do follow-up training unless forced. They were not trauma informed. They would try to force kids who had been sexually abused to hug them and other adults. They would scream at and belittle kids who come from domestic violence situations. Their favourite method of discipline was a form of public humiliation where they would drag the "problem" kid into the living room, force the other kids to come in, then the staff would start belittling and mocking them for an issue, then encourage other kids to join in. Does any of this sound okay to you?

[ixtlilton4]

The Place of Religious Charities and Homes in Foster Care (1/3)

Children's rights are a complex topic, largely because while children are fully functional humans that have their own complex thoughts and feelings about things, they also don't have the experience or maturity to self-govern. That is why parents exist, and when parents or legal guardians can't be named, there is a program where children become wards of the state. I know that religion and to what extent a parent is allowed to dictate religion to their children is a very nuanced topic, but I'm not interested in talking about it. I am not talking about parents who feel it is their right to raise their children in accordance with their culture and religion, I am talking about children who are legally wards of the state. And while there is much to be said about when and to what extent the say of the family of a foster child should have in the culture and religion their family member is exposed to, I am also not interested in talking about that at this moment. Instead, I am talking purely from a foster child's perspective of what say they should have in religious exposure, and what say the state should have. I'll be blunt. First amendment guarantees the right to freedom of expression and religion. It is seen as a personal matter, and not something the state or government should be able to dictate. For a child who is the ward of the state, the state has no right to dictate a particular religion to a child. It doesn't matter if the child is 2, 8, or 16, the state should never have the power or authority to place a child in a religious environment that the child is resistant to. Full stop. No exceptions. And what is more, the state, as the legal guardian, has responsibility to ensure the child not only isn't forced into a religious environment by any means, but also has access to a religious environment if they express a want or need for it. That means that if a foster child expresses they don't wish to go to church or religious event, their foster families or group home are not allowed to force them, and are not allowed to punish the child for it. It also means if a child expresses a desire to go to attend a church (or any other non christian equivalent) the state has a responsibility to make every effort to provide transit etc to make sure those needs are met. But, of course, there are many Christian charities and even Christian based group homes/residential facilities that have access to foster kids. I personally don't think Christian charities are inherently a bad thing, provided that the child's rights in regard to religion are being met (they are not forced to attend or participate in anything that involves a religious component if they do not want to), and I'm not going to tell someone that wants to help children not to. My issue is that this often doesn't happen, and children who are not comfortable are forced to bare it and smile through these events. My other issue is that these charities are often not vetted or looked into, and often just granted access to vulnerable children on the basis of them being a *Christian* organisation. This is a terrible idea, firstly, because it means you don't know what kind of people are interacting with foster children, and secondly it also means these people receive zero training whatsoever. People might ask "why would they need training to talk to kids?" Well, foster kids aren't just average children. They are, nearly universally, traumatised to some degree. And when you put a bunch of well-meaning people together with children they don't know anything about, you run into problems. Balloons on the ground that pop sometimes? Ha ha, no big deal. Until one of the foster kids in the building has a panic attack and spends 5 minutes feeling unable to breathe because they were in two separate drive-by shootings. Oh, you're a hugger and want to hug or touch the kid without their permission? That's great, until one of them (me) flips out because they can't stand being touched by strangers. I'll let you fill in the blanks on why a foster kid might not want to be touched by strangers.

[ixtlilton4]

Foster Care Social Workers and "Compassion Fatigue"

Whenever I have talked about the systemic issues with social workers who work with foster children or dependent adults, I'm almost always met with some kind of pushback or people trying to police how I speak by trying to force me into saying something akin to "not all social workers". And sure, before I write the rest of this, there are undoubtedly good social workers who do the best they can with what they have. I've met some. But here's the thing: if you are an adult and have a friend or a family member who works as a case worker, or you know some "good" ones, you need to realise that the person *you* see is not necessarily the person the foster kid sees.

I cannot count the times when an adult would, in front of me, talk about how good of a person or a social worker my caseworker was, while I sat there in angry silence clenching my fists. It wasn't because I was an angry child who wanted to take my anger out on the world, as other people tried to describe my behaviour. It's because over the course of my time in foster care, I've had social workers who put me into shitty foster homes, did not listen or ask about how the placement went, and then berated me for "acting out". I've also had a social worker hit me when I confronted her about not returning my calls or even doing the bare minimum monthly check ups that are required by law. Yet, both of these people were "highly praised" and, for the first, people would tell me how *lucky* I was to have her and not a lazy social worker like other kids.

Here's the brutal truth: you don't know what happens behind closed doors. If you haven't experienced being an orphaned child with none of the usual shields children have in place to protect them, and are entirely at the whim of people who know that if you complain, they can just say that you're lying because you don't have family to speak on your behalf- then you don't know social workers. The things that normal, well-adjusted people who in every other action are empathic and kind people will do behind a closed door when they know there aren't any consequences will shock and horrify you.

And again, when I write out or say these types of things, people, including mental health professionals, try to force me to reword it. To acknowledge "not all" case workers are like this. And for regular people, I get it. You want to have faith in the system. You want to minimize because thinking a former foster kid is jaded or traumatised is a lot easier than admitting that the issues that plague foster care are so deep, so embedded into it's very fabric, that the horrible people I am describing are not a rarity, but the norm. But when a therapist or some kind of licensed professional says this to me, the first thing that pops into my head is: Who the hell gave you your degree? I don't say that, of course, I try to explain things to them, not because I think they deserve the benefit of the doubt, but because if it makes them less likely to say this to the next patient, then I'll bite my tongue and deal with the discomfort and say I got out ahead.

Now, one of the main things I hear about when people who are not former foster kids talk about this issue is that social workers have a lot of compassion fatigue, and the people who really want to help kids get burnt out dealing with horror story after horror story. This is completely true. I work with some "private" organisations that work with disadvantaged youth, but foster children especially, and so many of these people started out in social work but just couldn't do it anymore because they felt like they not only didn't have a positive impact, but made things worse due to the way they were restricted with rules and such. I completely get it. I respect those people so, so much, not only for continuing to fight for children even after they couldn't do their original job anymore, but for recognising their own place and influence in the system and trying to find something better. And guess what? These people, the ones who realised what was happening and left for something better? I never, or almost never, hear "not all social workers" when we talk about systemic issues. Because they *fucking get it*. They don't get defensive because they know most if not all of what I'm saying is correct. It's why they fucking left.

But let's talk about the people who don't leave. I am fully willing to believe that a good portion of the people who set out to become social workers and then foster care social workers specifically want to help. It's hardly a glamorous job with glamorous pay. And yes, if you are one of those people and get met with horror story after horror story, and feel you aren't doing good, it can kill your motivation. You can make mistakes. You can forget a visit. I have empathy for that, and I am in full favour of restructuring the system so that not only are there enough case workers to actually be able to handle the caseloads they're given instead of scrambling, but also an increase in pay, training, and mental health awareness and programs to help people with these issues. It is a problem, but it's also not an excuse. Because while these issues are big ones, and sure, they contribute to fuck-ups, they don't give you a pass. If you miss a visit and your child complains, you don't get to say "I was busy with x". Because guess what? At the end of the day, *you* get to go home to your family. *You* get to go home to a safe, warm bed and the knowledge nobody is going to hurt you. Foster kids don't get that kind of guarantee, and a missed visit or a rushed phone call can be the difference between life or death in abuse cases.

In terms of systemic issues with the government and organisations within it, there's one branch that people are becoming increasingly aware of, and for some it's their first exposure to corruption, incompetence and abuse. I'm talking about cops. I know it seems like a 180, but hear me out. When people talk about systemic issues with cops, what do they point out? Firstly, they talk about the kind of people the job attracts. Bullies, people who like exerting power over others. The kind of people you do *not* want involved with vulnerable populations. But Police Departments are hardly the only organisation that attracts bad actors. Think about it for five minutes. If you're someone who maybe isn't really aggressive, but you like attention from people, you *crave* praise and being acknowledged as a "good person", and maybe you also enjoy having power over people, if only to parade them around for your benefit... what career choice would you go into? Well, you've got two major options: Nursing, and Social Work. If you fit the personality I just described, what better conversation starter can you have than "I save abused children"? One of my social workers fit this description to a T. Anytime I did or said something that even vaguely to her seemed like it was contradicting the image she had made for herself, she would get *pissed*. The last time I asked her why she hadn't called back or visited in three months, she hit me, then went on a rant about how she was "busy" with a bunch of kids who had it "worse" than me and then went on to describe in graphic detail an abuse case she was working on. Is that "compassion fatigue"? Was she just so stressed that hitting a twelve-year old for asking a reasonable question was an excusable response? And even if she hadn't, in what world is saying "my other kids are more important than you" an okay thing to think, led alone say to a kid who has no one else looking in on them? Back to the police officer analogy, another thing people are starting to realise about them is that being under stress, being in dangerous situations etc isn't an excuse for wrongly shooting someone. And guess what? You don't a gun to kill someone, not when you are the person, the only person in charge of checking in on them and making sure they're not only alive but in one piece. The child I mentioned in my other post, Marcus Fiesel? He was murdered by his foster parents in a horrific manner. But before it got to that point, several calls by neighbors were made. Social workers checked in but didn't intervene. I guess his case wasn't "bad enough". I guess they had other children who had it worse- until they didn't. If even one of those people took the situation seriously, if one had dug deeper and gotten that boy removed from the home, he'd still be alive today. But it shouldn't take severe abuse cases or a death to convince anyone that case workers should be doing, at the very least, the bare minimum required by law. Because foster kids don't just deserve to be *alive*, they deserve to be safe, happy, *loved*. And in the current system, that just isn't possible for the vast majority of kids.

[ixtlilton4]

On "The System" as a Whole

So, firstly, I think what just doesn't click with people about foster care is how utterly horrible and hopeless it is. I know a lot of people read anecdotal stories about child abuse in foster homes or group homes, or they've seen a news article about children like Marcus Fiesel who were horrifically abused and murdered, so there is at least some exposure to what can happen. But I think when people read these stories, it's very easy for them to dismiss them as extreme and isolated events thar are rare. Or, maybe thinking about child abuse at all is so disturbing for some people they try to push it as far down and away as possible, and in the process they just ignore it entirely. I don't know. What I do know is that these anecdotal stories you hear online, from people like me? They aren't rare. They aren't even uncommon. They are, depressingly, the norm. I spent nearly as much of my life in foster care as I did outside of it, and in addition to my own experiences, I've met a lot of other foster kids. Our stories, if not identical, echo each other in one important way: while whatever situation may have landed us in foster care may have been horrible or abusive, foster homes and group homes were often equally as bad.

I feel extremely confident in saying that if you have been in more than three placements (or homes), or you have spent more than 3-6 months in foster care, it is nearly impossible for you to have avoided being abused or neglected. For most people, though, they don't have to wait until their third home, the abuse and/or neglect starts on the first.

That is *horrifying*. That abusive or neglectful foster parents and group home staff are so prevalent and unchecked that nearly every foster kid who goes through the system is exposed to it is terrifying. It should upset you. It should make you *angry* that what is arguably the most vulnerable group in the country is so under protected.

I could go on for another 50 paragraphs about all the reasons this is true, but I think the most important thing for people to realise is that abuse and neglect in the foster system is so prevalent that it is *normal*, and we need to do something about it.