Foster Youth Lack Support from Healthy, Loving Homes

Many foster children have lives with stress levels that most people can't imagine. You may have heard this before, but it's so worth repeating:
 
"A collaborative study hosted by Harvard Medical School found that former foster youth had post-traumatic stress disorder rates up to twice as high as U.S. war veterans (Pecora, et al., 2005)."
 

Martin Guggenheim, Fiorello LaGuardia Professor of Clinical Law at New York University School of Law, wrote, "When a child is placed into foster care, he loses not only Mom and Dad but often brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, teachers, friends and classmates. For a young enough child, it can be an experience akin to a kidnapping."

Unfortunately, many foster youth age out of foster care and carry these emotional and mental scars with them throughout their adult life. Not only is there a real human cost for these children, but society (meaning taxpayers) also bear the cost. One researcher estimates that the cost to support one foster kid who has aged out is about $300,000. We must and can do better.

Finding relatives of a foster child is an inexpensive way to start the process to get these children out of foster care so that can have the same healthy, loving home environment as their peers.

Regards,


  Richard

Richard Villasana
Find Families In Mexico
760-690-3995

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