Research Paper - Part 1 & 2 - Introduction & Description of Issues

Over 400,000 American children are in foster care at this very moment. They
have been taken away when their families are in a crisis and cant take care of them.
Children are placed in foster care when a child protective services worker and a court
have determined that it is not safe for the child to remain at home, because of a risk of
maltreatment, including neglect and physical or sexual/child abuse. I was adopted when
I was 6 years old therefore I am very passionate about obtaining more knowledge,
along with helping kids that were in my situation. The top causes on why children enter
foster care are: physical abuse, sextual abuse,neglect, medical neglect, incarceration,
abandonment, death or voluntary placement. I believe that foster care system is flawed
and that children are being placed in unfit homes. Homes that are supposed to be a
safer and better place than what they were taken away from.
Foster care is a temporary living arrangement for abused, neglected, and
dependent children who need a safe place to live when their parents or another relative
cannot take care of them. Foster care is intended to protect children from neglect and
abuse at the hands of parents and other family members, yet all too often it becomes an
equally cruel form of neglect and abuse by the state. Sometimes, foster care
placements are made that are just as abusive, if not more so, than the home from which
the child was removed. According to Erica Simon who wrote an article on The Horror
Stories These Former Foster Care Kids Have. Sound Too Bad To Be True. But They're
Not. "People need to know that foster care youth need love and care just like other
children." said a former foster care child named Marcellia. Marcellia was born to a
drug-addicted mother who was unable to properly care for her and her siblings. They
were placed in foster care when she was 10 years old, and Marcellia remained in the
system until she aged out at 19. During those nine years, she was separated from her
biological brothers several times, neglected, and placed in homes with, as she states so
simply, "no love."