Foster Children - Foster Care Stages to Moving Foster kids into Forever Homes

You probably know that the focus of Find Families In Mexico is to get children out of foster care. Our organization's vision is for "all U.S. foster children to have a permanent home." We make this happen by locating a foster child's relatives, the critical first step in the process to move foster youth into forever homes. Many have asked about what happens to foster kids once their relatives have been found.


When we have completed our work, called family finding, a case moves to the second stage called "engagement." During this part, agencies will notify all the relatives who were identified in the initial family finding stage. This list may include as many as 60 adult relatives.

Relatives go through a screening process to ensure they are willing and able to take in and care for a foster child. When an appropriate match is identified and verified, the process advances so that the foster youth will be put in relative placement.

Sometimes no adult relatives are found during the family finding process. Once evidence is presented that every reasonable effort has been made to identify and locate the child's relatives without success, the court will often allow the case to move toward adoption or to placement with unrelated adults.


Our organization has a success rate of 95% resulting in relatives being located. The question that people often ask is, "What happens to the U.S. foster children whose relatives are found living in Mexico?" Our work often leads to other, possibly unknown, family members who are living in the U.S. In these cases, foster children go to live with their U.S. relatives.

Another common question is, "What happens if the only relatives found are living in Mexico?" First there is the matter that virtually every case we handle involves U.S.-born children who had at least one U.S.-born parent. The U.S. courts are not known for shipping U.S. citizens to other countries. Just imagine the headlines if a U.S. child was sent to the Ukraine or Liberia!

You may argue (and please do so in the Comment section below) that foster kids should be with their families. That is a philosophical aspect that we will leave to others although we did work a case where sending the child back to live with the birth mother would have been completely amoral. What we can share is that in every case we have worked, the foster youth stayed in the U.S. either with relatives or adoptive parents.


The goal of foster care agencies is to move the 400,000 foster kids out of the system either back with their parents or into forever homes. Foster children benefit from finally having a stable home and adults who care about them. Taxpayers benefit because of the savings of hundreds of millions of dollar that are spent annually supporting children while in the foster care system.

Family finding, locating a foster kid's relatives, is vital to the foster care mission. More funding needs to be directed to this activity so that agencies and taxpayers aren't paying for damage control while foster youth continue to spend years forgotten in a government institution.

Regards,


  Richard

Richard Villasana
Find Families In Mexico
760-690-3995

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Foster Children - Foster Kid Statistics Reveal Failure of Aging Out Preparations

Recently we shared foster care statistics about the fate of teens who age out of the system. Everyone is shocked when they hear that 90% of foster children who age out of the system become homeless or addicted to drugs, don't continue their education, or end up in prison all within just a two year period.


Here are some of the comments we have received about these stats.

"It's hideous to think of those kids becoming homeless." Dianna Whitley

"These stats are really disturbing." Steven H. Poulos

"The reality of these facts is very sad." Rose Perkins

As you may expect, people then start to talk about possible solutions to help foster teens once they age out. Some, such as Marlene Krueger, will ask about improving access to independent living support. Other talk about training tied to a jobs program. One solution that is picking up greater acceptance is raising the age at which foster teens are forced out of the foster care system from 18 to 21. Almost half of the states have adopted this new age limit.

As noteworthy as these ideas are, these combined solutions have failed to help more than 10% of the thousands of foster youth who age out yearly. Hundreds, if not thousands, of organizations are putting out their best effort to help foster children once they age out. Yet this year alone, 24,000 teens will age out with only 2,400 avoiding the horrific future described above. By most standards, these results mean that post-age out efforts are a failure.


Boyd Johnson said it best, "Prevention is always better than looking for the cure." Probably the most far-reaching federal program is Chafee Grant. This program offers assistance to help current and former foster care youths achieve self-sufficiency. The program:

"identifies children who are likely to remain in foster care until 18 years of age and to help these children make the transition to self-sufficiency by providing services such as assistance in obtaining a high school diploma, career exploration... job placement and retention, training in daily living skills, training in budgeting and financial management skills... "

Yet again, based on the foster care statistics above, it's clear that Chafee has a very limited impact on those children who age out. And as Brenda Cook reminds us, "An 18 year old is still a child regardless of what the calendar says."

So is there a time-tested, viable solution that will reduce the number of foster teens who leave the system or that gives these kids the best support possible? Fortunately, there is such a solution.

Finding a foster child's family members is the single most beneficial action for the youth with the exception of reunification with their birth parents. As we have said before, there are several studies, all reaching the same conclusion: placing a foster kid with a relative generally leads to more happiness, better health, physically, mentally and emotionally, compared to those children who are in either foster placement or sent to a group home.


Children in relative placement do better at school. They graduate at a higher level than their foster peers. A higher percentage of these kids with family support attend college, graduate and have a higher rate of both getting a job and succeeding at it.

For full disclosure, yes, our organization, Find Families In Mexico, provides this relative location service to foster care agencies throughout the U.S. We do this because of the overwhelming evidence that has proven time and again that a foster child does much better with relatives than with strangers. And our services are pro bono (free) to government agencies.

We understand that there is no one perfect solution. Even with relative placement, bad things can and do happen to children. Yet until another process comes along that shows such positive results, we urge everyone who asks the question, "How can we help these children?" to either volunteer their time and talent or give a financial contribution. It's that simple.

Take a step toward helping a foster child. It'll do your heart good.

Regards,


  Richard

Richard Villasana
Find Families In Mexico
760-690-3995

PS. Share your thoughts and ideas below and share this post with others.

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Foster Children - Foster Care Statistics Show the Deck Is Stacked Against Them

Many people have asked us over the past month how is it that foster children are not receiving the services they so desperately need. Two such services are family finding and relative placement.


Family finding is a social service's and governmental term for the activity of identifying, locating and notifying adult family members that one of their related children is in foster care. Federal and often state laws mandate thorough efforts be executed to locate family members of foster kids so they can move out of foster care and into "relative" placement, living with family as opposed to complete strangers.

Nearly 84,000 U.S. foster youth have Hispanic ancestry with the majority having some relatives still living in Mexico.

As we have commented in the past, many foster care agencies lack the resources or the training to effectively perform family finding in Mexico. Fortunately, due to our increased outreach to agencies around the country, more and more cases are being brought to us. The result is that more foster children are now reconnected with their families, and many are now out of the system and living with adult relatives in the U.S.

However, there are still tens of thousands of children who are languishing in a government institution (group home) in part because many agencies claim a lack of funding to support family finding in Mexico. This brings us back to the foster care statistics above.


The foster care system has a serious money problem. That problem is in how they allocate our tax dollars to support the system and not foster children.

Let's see how this funding mismanagement is working against getting foster kids out of the system and into permanent homes with their relatives. These two issues, family finding and relative placement, are inseparably linked together.

I've already said that some agencies use lack of funds as a reason not to perform family finding even though this is a federal requirement. When a foster child's relatives are located, the most likely outcome is that the child will be in relative placement.

There is a HUGE incentive for foster care agencies not to find relatives. Using the chart above, we see that when foster kids are placed in a group home, the agency now has $102,348 to spend on caring for each child. There are also 45 group homes involved with the necessary staff to run those facilities.


Here are the hard numbers:

Relative Placement

11,188 foster children living in homes with caring, loving relatives

Cost: $47.1 million/year

Group Home Placement

1,070 foster children living in government operated facilities 

Cost = $109 million/year

Or to really put this into context, if those 1,070 children in group home placement were instead in relative placement, there would be a savings of:

 

You may think that more money clearly means a better outcome for foster youth. You would be mistaken. Studies show that foster kids generally do better in all areas of their lives and their futures are far superior to those children in either foster care placement or a group home.


Now here's the real crime against foster children. Sex trafficking victims are most likely to be former foster youth with some children still being in the foster care system. The foster care statistics above show that an overwhelming amount of personnel and support are available for kids in group foster homes. Yet children who are physically and sexually abused and become victims of sex trafficking are for the most part those same children in either foster care placement, a non-family home, or in a group home.

We all want the best for those children who through no fault of their own, end up in foster care. We expect that the government will do its best to protect these children and get them out of foster care as fast as possible. The mission of foster care agencies is to have these children either returned to their parents or, in those cases where this is not safe or possible, to have the children in relative placement.


Unfortunately, based on studies such as the one above and many more, it is in the best interest of agencies not to locate family members for all foster youth. Failing to locate relatives, those foster children can now be fed into foster care placement or a group home, both which provide less safety for foster kids and a much greater probability of them aging out and living a life being homeless, undereducated or ending up in prison.


You can help more foster children by donating and supporting our efforts to find their family members.


There is a lot of money in foster care. It's just that not enough is going to finding family members and putting children in relative placement.

Do it for the children,


  Richard

Richard Villasana
Find Families In Mexico
760-690-3995

PS. Share your thoughts and ideas below and share this post with others.

Get a PDF copy of this blog on foster care agencies stacking the deck against foster children.

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