By: Gabriel Weber

Imagine you’re given a bag of mixed candies; some contain excruciating poison, and some are perfectly sweet. The illusion of choice has been eliminated; you are starving and must eat regardless. This is the reality of children in foster care.

Foster care may be able to provide more opportunities and a better quality of life for a kid in the system than their biological family. It also has the potential to double down on the trauma already experienced.

Foster care, according to Child Welfare Information Gateway, is a temporary court-monitored service that promotes the safety and well-being of children and youth. The government supports foster care through funding and legislation. Caregivers often have to be licensed and trained to provide children with shelter, support, and care, but it differs by state. 

In Indiana, foster parents must be at least 21, go through a background check, and be licensed by the Department of Children Services.

A child can end up in foster care due to a variety of parental problems, including illness, incarceration, substance abuse, unexpected death, intellectual disabilities, and more. It can also be due to severe behavioral problems children have that biological parents can’t handle. 

Afterward, a social worker investigates and potentially obtains a judge’s approval to remove the child from the house. 

Heather Tarpley grew up in a home that provided hotline care for kids and started caring for kids at 13 years old, which contributed to her decision to foster later in life. 

Heather says her family felt grief from getting attached to a child that must be relinquished later on. She called it a bittersweet feeling providing hurt children a safe, loving, temporary home. 

“My mom still, to this day, talks about those kids and wonders how they’re doing and wishes that she could figure out that information,” she says. “I still can see their little faces, they don’t go away.”

Heather says biological families must agree to keep contact with the foster children, so once a child leaves care, the connection could be gone forever. 

Heather feels especially protective around the numerous assumptions made about her kids and their situations.

“Often people will say, ‘[The kids] are so lucky for us,’” she says. “There’s this grandioso-type mindset that foster parents are doing this great and wonderful thing without ever really digging deep enough to realize the depth of it all.” 

Mental and physical health

According to Adopt US Kids, there are more than 400,000 kids in the United States foster care system, and, according to Science Direct, they are two to four times more likely to suffer from mental health disorders than non-placed children. 

It is common to see internalized traumatic emotional experiences in childhood morph into organic diseases later in life. However, research shows that child-focused models of trauma-informed care actually reduce post-traumatic stress symptoms.

Trauma-informed care depicts a patient’s complete life story in order to provide effective health care services. 

Stephanie Boehm has fostered five children and adopted three. Boehm and her family knew before becoming a foster family that their home would not solely foster. They expected the outcome of adoption. 

“We always had the intention that if a child became legally free, we would adopt them,” Boehm says. “If a child entered our home, they would not leave our home unless the system removed them because we believe in stability and commitment to the kids.”

Boehm is an advocate for a trauma-informed system and an overhaul of the foster care system; all three of her kids were a product of generational foster care — meaning they were not the first in their families to go through the system.

“The majority of our kids and the majority of families, they love their kids,” she says. “And I believe that the best place for a child is with their biological family … I don’t think the majority of parents are trying to harm their kids, but they lack the tools to know how to possibly parent or to do something different from what they learned.” 

Relationships with trust at the core provide the foundation for healing through genuine support by attempting to understand the kind of trauma children in foster care are exposed to. 

However, the harsh reality of foster care, according to think of us, is that 16% of children enter foster care as a result of physical or sexual abuse. The majority have been separated from their families as a result of neglect.

After becoming directly involved with the foster system, Heather was forced to reckon with her own assumptions around situations that caused the displacement of a child. Heather took the chance to have a family visit with her adopted child’s biological family and was able to further understand their life conditions.

Heather says that even a 50-cent raise at a minimum-wage job can remove many welfare benefits that these families rely on to survive.

“At that point, it is better for them to never improve, because that 50 cents an hour isn’t going to make up all that they’re going to lose to get that 50 cents an hour increase of pay,” she says. “That’s the brokenness of the system where they are being held down.” 

In most states, when a child turns 18, they are considered an adult and emancipated from the state. This happens to more than 24,000 kids every year. 

There is potential to face and rectify structural flaws, corruption, abuse in the system, and convoluted legalities through awareness. 

Heather says people can help by challenging the system and seeking the difficult truth.

“As a whole, we’re all about brushing it under the rug, but this is not something that needs to be brushed under the rug,” she says. “This needs to be brought to light and opened up. We need to keep asking hard questions.”

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