Find Families In Mexico: Foster Child - Reunited with Only Living Relatives

Monday, July 7, 2014

Foster Child - Reunited with Only Living Relatives

When a child enters the foster care system, the goal of the agency is to get that foster child into a permanent home as soon as possible. The first step is to locate as many adult relatives as possible. Unfortunately, there are foster youth cases when no other relatives can be located in the U.S. That is when agencies and their non-profit partners have to look elsewhere such as in Mexico.

By successfully finding family members, foster children are reconnected to family members who may decide to take in the child. Since agencies may spend as much as $60,000 a year per foster child, it's also beneficial to the agency and ultimately taxpayers. The financial support for foster kids who are taken in by their family members is much less than what the agency would spend.

Casey Family Programs is one of the most reputable non-profits that works with county foster care agencies in the U.S. They do an excellent job of finding relatives in the U.S., but in this case, the search needed to be done in Mexico to locate the only known living relatives for a little foster girl in Texas.

Imagine that your future depending on an organization finding your relatives. Making this case very challenging was that there was only the name of one family member and only the name of the Mexican state. To put this into perspective, this was like being asked to find Robert Johnson in Texas. Yes, that was all the information there was.

You can read more about this foster child story, but of course, there is a happy ending. A relative was found so this little girl doesn't have to go through life with no family support. She won't have to live a life like the tens of thousands of foster youth who do poorly in school, have a low graduation rate and struggle to get and keep a job. This little girl now has a family and someone to support her.

The life of this foster child is changed forever for the better, and it all started with finding her relatives. There are more foster children success stories to be told, but that can't happen until more agencies reach out for help and more people step up to support efforts to reconnect more children with their families.

Do it for the children,