Fostering is SAD

The foster care system is deeply flawed and is skewed to do two things. Firstly it pushed kids to get put back with their biological parents. Secondly it pushes for younger kids to get adopted over older kids. Both of these are factors in the rate of aging out and the terrible outcomes in life for those who have been in foster care. People who have gone back to their biological parents have mental health issues either from being with their biological parents or being in the foster care system or very likely both. They were taken away from those parents in the first place for a very good reason, why are they going back? There is such a high rate of this happening because there has been an open push for this to happen. The outcomes of this have not been good. Those kids are back in the situations they were pulled from and can now not receive the aid that they would have received if they were in foster care or the small aid that they would have received if they aged out of the system. Then there is the monumental gap in adoption rates between those who are younger and those closer to 18. There has never been a stated push to prioritize the adoption of younger children over those closer to emancipation, however there is a large disparity in adoption rates. This is possible due to the fact that people just do not want to adopt a 16-year-old. This leaves that child with two years of foster care homes before aging out, and this is unacceptable. There is little assistance after someone has come out of foster care at age 18. There are very few people ready for adulthood, especially adulthood completely on their own at that age. Those who age out are badly set up for independence. They have no permanent mentors like those with parents do, they likely do not have a job as they move from foster home to foster home, ad they do not have a sense of healthy relationships. It is a recipe for disaster and the statistics show that. Foster care and adoption agencies do have some things set up, but it is not the same nationally or even close to what is needed. Many agencies offer a transition program where they learn skills to be independent, but most agencies start that program at 13. That seems a little like foreshadowing. A more common practice now is to set up is a program that sets up those who are aging out with mentors. What that practice fails to remember is that people move, and they may not like each other. The simplest answer is just to get these children adopted more often. Far too many of these children are taken from their family, no matter how flawed they are, and then moved around from family to family and never given a permanent life anywhere. Its depressing to hear their stories and even more depressing to  realize that this happens to thousands of kids a year.