This report about states embezzling Social Security money from foster kids seems like a good time to start about the problems foster children frequently face (there are many). In addition to this, the private contractor hired by Wisconsin to do this already reprehensible task took about $500,000 from the state and spent it on hookers and blow. Instead of being fired, the contractor was contracted to run the program until 2016.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
That's right, adopt already traumatized children and them give them away when it doesn't work out the way you thought it would.
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.
To be fair, some children are traumatized beyond the reach of even very loving adoptive parents. A lot of adoptive parents are selfish assholes that shouldn't be anywhere near kids, but some kids are toxic and dangerous.
Sending kids to new homes without any kind of CPS oversight....just no.
There are such enormous issues at play here, it is hard to wrap my head around. I have extensive knowledge of the ethical problems involved in domestic infant adoption, and some knowledge of the issues with International adoption, and second hand knowledge of the foster and foster to adopt systems.
The conclusion is the same in all of them, nobody seems to know what to do or how to do it to ensure the well being of children, and no authorities seem willing or able to prioritize it or fund programs that try to address the problems.
I could have actively caused emotional harm to vulnerable people in the adoption process, and been not only within the law to do so, but been fully supported by regulatory agencies. I could still do so, I can fuck up people, including Kiddo, in such massive ways...and nobody would know or care. Having that power and responsibility is a huge part of my life, every day.
Pre and post adoption support for both birth parents and adoptive parents is not just lacking, it is missing. There are people who probably meant well and had good intentions, but unrealistic expectations, completely failing because they have nobody to help them when their child is violent or uncontrollable. There are people horribly abusing their children but who are allowed to keep raising them despite reports and warning. There are good parents who lose their kids to false reports or corrupt officials. CPS fucks up probably as often as it helps...overwhelmed and underfunded for the best of them, and also attractive to the kind of people who enjoy abusing authority. Mental Health services are inadequate, not consistent in quality, not affordable, or in the case of RAD there is no consensus as to the best treatment methods and no really good studies showing that any treatment is terribly successful.
There are people so desperate to rid themselves of these kids that they go underground. The very fact that somebody is on the Internet looking to take these kids off other people's hands is a huge red flag that they are probably abusers.
Sorry this is rambling and such, just throwing out my thoughts. I am sick from reading about these people.
The girl was almost 2, and the agency warned that she had a “developmental and speech delay.” Two years later, an American doctor also diagnosed the girl with fetal alcohol syndrome and severe attachment disorders.
Now 7 years old, Alexander says, the girl has attacked her mother and classmates and tried to cut out her tongue with scissors. In the last three years, she has been hospitalized nine times for psychiatric care.
The Alexanders sought help from schools, social workers and other parents. But they found there is little assistance available for parents of international adoptees, particularly when children have severe trauma and emotional problems.
Many parents are unprepared to handle the problems. Their adoption agencies often won’t help. And neither will the U.S. government. Amanda Alexander left a job in management to devote time to her daughter. The Alexanders travelled from Seattle to Virginia to meet specialists, amassed enormous medical bills and moved to a different state to get better care for her.
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Over the last decade, 627 parents in Illinois have relinquished their children to obtain mental health services. In 2001, a report by the Government Accountability Office found about 3,700 children in 19 states entered the child welfare system within a single year.
Child welfare agencies say the system was not built to take children with severe mental health issues simply because the parents cannot afford to pay for such care. “We see this as a public policy issue,” says Karen Hawkins, a spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. “It’s the lack of resources for community mental health funding for children. That is the context to which we’re all working.”
This is a serious thread, so I wasn't going to bring this up, but now I am anyway.
I am going to spoil the Very Special Season 15 Finale Episode of Law & Order: SVU.
So there is a baby that, at the end of the episode, is officially declared an orphan by a judge in a courtroom, and Benson is standing in the doorway and the judge goes all like, "Hey, you have been to a lot of these hearings about this baby, Benson! Do you want this baby?" and she's like OKAY I GUESS, and they straight give her that baby.
There is only one way that could have been more emotionally gripping and ripped from the headlines:
My wife and I have decided not to have more than the one biological child, and that if/when we are ready for another, we will adopt. We've talked specifically about not adopting an infant, going for an age range that might have a harder time getting adopted, but young enough that we could work through any major issues. It's a lot to think about, it's very intimidating. Any advice for where we might start if we were to get serious about this?
My friends experience with a one year old adopted from the system has scared the shit out of me. She was one of the kids who was violent, manipulative, and eventually criminal despite love and every form of treatment and therapy that exists. My experience with (infant) adoption is probably the best I have heard about because of my commitment to everyone involved, and yes I am patting my own back here, and it is still emotionally difficult in many ways, and I deal with a lot of uncertainty, insecurity, anger, and fear from many different directions. Fortunately Kiddo is amazing and I find parenting fulfilling and priceless, and its all worth it for us.
Sadly despite my excellent outcome with it, so far, I can't actually recommend adoption to anyone.
That being said, you know yourself better than I do, and know your strengths and weaknesses. If you want to do this, you should go through the state and possibly foster to adopt. You can choose placements based on age, special needs you can or cannot accommodate, circumstances you can handle with the birth family etc. It sounds callous to have a checklist, but it's better to be upfront with yourself and the agency regarding that, than to accept a child into your home that you cannot properly care for or cannot bond with.
I am sorry to be a bummer, but found the adoption "world" a place I cannot hang so rarely get to talk about it honestly.
PS it's very difficult to find honesty in the adoption arena. That's why those stories of people going underground don't shock me at all, though they sadden and anger me. I am not giving anyone a pass for being assholes, I am just saying that nobody seems to be willing to lay it out there and say "there's a real possibility this might suck for you. It might end up being a situation you aren't equipped to cope with. Because there is a kid at the heart of the matter, you may face guilt or depression for even thinking for a moment ' oh hey this sucks'"
You are probably like me, and have a good enough BS detector to see past the rah rah and approach it pragmatically.
I was under no illusions that having a bio kid was going to be all sunshine and rainbow unicorn puke, I can't imagine anyone thinking adoption wouldn't have any difficulties or hazards…
That's a good idea about a checklist, I'll make sure we talk about it next time it comes up.
If that's accurate, it sounds like this really is on them and not the system.
However. Biological parents rehome their kids all the time. In their case, they really do sound negligent at best; but I'm not so sure that 'rehoming' is really a universal horribleness. People send their kids to live with other people, temporarily or permanently or seasonally, for any number of reasons. Where do you draw the line? Is there a universal double standard for biological vs. adoptive parents? Is there an acceptable amount or percentage of time? Are there OK reasons and not OK reasons that you might send a kid to live with someone else? Is boarding school OK? Are certain relationships more acceptable for rehoming than others, like is it OK if they stay with their grandparents but not friends?
If there's any truth to that story, I would draw the line before what the Harrises did, but I'm not sure exactly where.
Rehoming kids does happen...but it's usually not done between strangers that meet through classified ads on the Internet.
I wasn't even aware that transfer of guardianship within families (long term, to where they would be registering for school and such) didn't require a court filing. I thought the whole "legal guardian" thing required at least a minimal looksee by a judge just like a custody agreement would. It seems like it would be a reasonable amount of government intrusion, not some huge burden.
Like, hey, lisarea, Kiddo is 9 and his amusement at fart jokes because of 9 is annoying me, can I put him on a plane to you? No need to involve anyone but my elderly neighbor who is a notary.
ETA: To adopt or foster, people have to have criminal background checks and have social workers snooping in their closets and a series of interviews...why is all that necessary if kids can just be handed over to whomever, whenever?
I would, of course, but I'm not really a fan of fart jokes either. Meta-fart jokes are OK, but I don't have a lot of patience for the regular kind.
It doesn't make too much sense to me, really, either, but I know lots of kids who've gone to live with someone else long-term where I don't think court oversight came into it. I don't know about claiming dependency or signing consent forms or anything, but they'd just go to school where they were staying, I think.
There was a ruckus with niece's school zone during her parents' split as she went back and forth between them and my mom. Had we known it was so easy, my mom would have had them write a letter and kept her in her original school. The school made it sound like "legal guardianship" was some big hard to get thing (maybe it is some places), and that attending the wrong school was almost criminal.
I guess just like pretending you think fart jokes are really funny and overexplaining them or something like that.
I remember seeing in some old man catalog, like Fingerhut probably, they were selling a brown hat that said "Hoof Arted?" on it, and spending way too much time trying to understand what kind of person would buy or wear that hat and why they would think it was funny, and then deciding that it was actually funny that people who think that sort of thing is funny exist.
I don't know. I was covering my bases because I didn't want to unequivocally say I don't like fart jokes and then having it come back to bite me somehow.
Stop making me talk about fart jokes in the serious thread.
ETA: To adopt or foster, people have to have criminal background checks and have social workers snooping in their closets and a series of interviews...why is all that necessary if kids can just be handed over to whomever, whenever?
Oh, I missed your edit. It looks like at least in that case, the rehoming was just transferring guardianship, so the new family didn't go through the foster or adoption process. (And supposedly they'd passed an adoption screening at some point, too.)
But if you're going to prohibit something, you have to be specific, and the suggestions for legislation make it sound like they're saying they don't want people to be able to send adopted kids to live with someone else at all. So if a parent is in the military and gets called up, should they be able to temporarily transfer guardianship to a family member or friend while they're away? If a seventeen year old is having a volatile relationship with their parents, can they transfer guardianship over to someone else until they turn 18 (so permanently)? If the parent gets transferred out of state, can the kid stay with a friends while they finish out the school year in their current school? Or does the state need to intervene every time a kid stays with someone other than their legal parents?
Passing legislation that only applies to adopted kids wouldn't be right, and if you look at all the totally normal scenarios where biological parents send their kids to live with someone else, it seems it'd be really intrusive and cumbersome to require state approval.
One state made legislation that if legal guardianship is being passed to a non family member it must be okayed by a judge. That seems common sensical to me. In fact I thought for sure that's how it worked. If nothing else people need to know where to go for medical consent and emergency contact and such. Also, kids adopted out of the state system most often have special needs and receive subsidies...the state has an interest in ensuring those needs are being met.
ETA: Wait, lemme talk to my mom. We had a friend of my brother live with us back in high school for this very reason. I don't remember how it worked.
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If the parent gets transferred out of state, can the kid stay with a friends while they finish out the school year in their current school?
One time I saw Louis CK on the Daily Show, and he talked to Jon about why farts (not fart jokes) are so funny, and Jon was like "I never thought you could make a fart funnier by deconstructing it, but there you go" and it was indeed funny as hell.
Yeah, but common sense is just the subset of things the speaker is used to. What's so special about someone's family members that they get a pass? Bad people have families, too, so if you're left with the choice of leaving your kid with stable family friends vs. your abusive, alcoholic parents or an irresponsible sibling and you have limited resources and possibly limited time to make arrangements, a requirement like that could take that decision out of your hands.
There are lots of people for whom this type of thing is fairly normal. Maybe they are sick, need to be able to travel for work on short notice, or they're poor and they have to go to jail for parking tickets and things like that, and want to leave their kids with a close friend or neighbor for a month or so without having to go through a judge to get permission? It just seems like the kind of thing that's going to select for the type of people who have the resources to navigate the system.
We have to trust parents to make decisions for their kids, and limiting their options like that, requiring that some family court judge approve their decisions, seems unnecessarily burdensome and possibly even dangerous when it limits people's ability to make decisions they think are right.
Maybe a lot of those situations could be covered by some kind of power of attorney or something, but if that's the case, what's the important distinction being made?
None of that would apply to this guy. This guy was just an arrogant shit who thought he knew better than everyone else, and then tried to bury the evidence that he didn't. And maybe for other adoptive parents, there need to be better support systems somehow that don't leave them in the position to consider these things, but crafting a punitive law to deal with people like that guy seems like it'd catch up a whole lot of other people in its net and affect them disproportionately.
crafting a punitive law to deal with people like that guy seems like it'd catch up a whole lot of other people in its net and affect them disproportionately.
Well yeah, reactionary laws are prone to that. I get that.
Can you think of a way to draw a line that prevents handing already vulnerable kids over to strangers found through want ads? It's seriously close to trafficking and that's what is icking me out.
Foster care/adoption thrad
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