The fostering system is already known to have abusive foster parents. Now you just encourage them. You encourage extremely large foster households in which children cannot get adequate nurturing. You encourage hostile custody lawsuits in which parents do their best to alienate the child against the other parent. And at the margin you encourage the murder of children.
This entire idea of granting votes from minor children to their adult caretakers would be extraordinarily bad for society.
it's not the foster care that is the problem. even if the foster parents are perfect, separating children from their parents against their will is causing severe trauma to the children and often hurting them more than what the parents might do to them.
i agree with your second paragraph. the focus needs to be on supporting parents to take better care of their children.
Those old systems were full of abuse. There are bad foster parents, but overall it is better. Until someone thinks up something better the current system is what we have.
I'm against the abuse of children and happy to use the government to accomplish that.
However, the prevalence of abuse and neglect in the foster care system - complete with cases on that order of horror - makes a very weak case for the idea that external regulation accomplishes any better.
i don't see the problem in the foster system itself (yes the system may have issues, but that's another topic)
the problem is that fostering in most cases is the wrong way to help those children. instead the parents need help. but that help needs to be provided in a way such that parents and children can stay together.
but that is not what is done. instead the children are taken away and the parents are left to themselves: go fix your problems, and then you can have your children back.
pretty much the only cases where fostering is the right choice is where children are in actual danger or the parents need to go to prison for serious crimes.
(USA centric view) You cannot legislate parents into being good parents. You cannot pass laws that protect children from bad parenting as best case result you may get the state to intervene and put the child in a foster system where there's a 50% chance that they end up in an even worse place.
And there's the detail that of course any such punishment will make the problem infinitely worse. Why are laws always written from the point of view that the state is all-powerful, that it can and will solve whatever problem such a law creates ? It just won't. This sounds, on the surface like it will improve kids' lives, but it will make quite a few kids' lives a LOT worse once you take into account that there's nothing the the state can do here. It cannot replace parents it takes away (nor would kids accept those new parents).
(Before you say "but child services/adoption/foster care", read about how well kids are supervised there. Foster care is a LOT worse for kids than being ignored at home)
(i added more to my previous comment so you may have missed that)
the fact that foster kids can be taken away easily is the problem, because that should not happen. and that can only be avoided if foster parents are vetted more strongly.
This is actually a big issue with child/family services as well. A lot of what they do is extra-judicial, though in theory there is often judicial review... eventually. This is coming from a foster parent. Don't get me wrong, a lot of these services are needed, but you would hear stories of abuse by the system.
Extra-judicial threats are something everyone should be on guard against.
My wife's family fostered and the only thing that happens is the kids eventually get sent back to the families. Even families who have abused the kids multiple times. We don't have an answer to kids from bad families. The state can't overcome bad parents.
This statement seems to be based on a false premise that foster care is bad care (it is often very good care where I originate from, UK) and ignores the fact that sometimes parents kill their children and that there are many children in desperate need of help.
The greater problem with the CPS or similar agencies is underfunding. This leads to families only having dealings with them when the circumstances are suspected of being dire, rather than CPS having the resources to support parents in a meaningful way over a meaningful period of time. Such meaningful support helps to reduce the need for more drastic interventions and allows social workers to have much more knowledge of the families they are helping and of when interventions are needed.
The United States does separate children from their parents and put them in the foster system when their parents are tried and convicted and nobody is around to take care of the kids, take that as you will. (Personally I think it is very bad and poses the question of which crimes can be awarded non-prison sentences which presently mean prison. Few people are so bad that the loss to society of incarcerating them does not go beyond the cost, which is already high, of maintaining the prisons.)
It would be nice if prosecutors really were that compassionate. I've read that lots of kids end up in foster care because their parents go to jail. But maybe that only happens to poor people.
An alternative would be to have criminal parents serve time consecutively -- that way noone gets away, and the children would not have to be taken away.
From what I've seen the biggest issue is that people do it for the money, which I think is likely the primary cause for physical abuse in the system.
I think sexual abuse in the system comes from the targeting of at risk youths, which is why Sweden disturbs me so much. Departmental reviews in England & Wales and Scotland report around 20% allegations of sexual abuse in foster homes, so Sweden having 42% suggest a severe lack of auditing of their carers for histories of abuse.
I think compounding issues are 50% of kids have a serious medical condition, 20% have mental health issues. So the stressors are significantly higher on carers, which in turn is why foster parents are paid so along with child care benefits generally a parent can be home to take care of the children.
The abolition of the orphanage system inundated the foster system, so we went from 1 person caring for 5+ kids to 1 or 2 caring for 1 kid. I don't think the orphanage system was necessarily better, but it would be much easier to eliminate abuses.
Honestly I think putting abusers through court ordered anger management and parenting classes would be far better than putting kids in foster care, because the fact is adoption rates decline with age and far too many kids graduate the system, because teenagers simply don't get adopted.
I think modernising the orphanage system would alleviate some of this issue. If teenagers aren't being adopted take the practical approach where they can be in an orphanage, make friends and have a social worker who's invested in their progress, which would mean the foster system would need lower financial incentives and thereby you would get more kind-hearted people and less people wanting the money.
It's a supply and demand issue essentially, and subsidizing demand always inevitably leads to problems.
Most foster families are loving, but it's interesting to note in these situations where the parent/guardian is paid from outside the household for the children (foster or child support) we see increased rates of abuse. Correlation does not imply causation but there seems to be a heavy correlation between being paid for the child and abuse.
This entire idea of granting votes from minor children to their adult caretakers would be extraordinarily bad for society.
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