by Joanne Lynch

Created on: April 12, 2009

Where do I begin to address the ways the US governments harm children they seek to protect? Where do I end? There are so many ways that children are harmed through the bureaucracy of our system. The examples are endless.

I grew up in a family that took in foster children for over 25 years. I saw, first hand, what happened to children the system was supposed to "protect". Often times, it left me feeling very angry and very disillusioned about adults and communities. It definitely left an impact on my ability to trust authority figures.

So many times, I watched children come and go from our home. I would watch children, malnourished, burned with curling irons, punched in the face, neglected, and emotionally, physically and sexually abused. I would watch these same children be forced back into their biological families even when there was doubt that reunification would be successful. I would watch children beg not to return to environments from which they came. It was no use. They were going back. It was heart-wrenching.

There was one occasion in which a teenage boy was removed from his biological father because of suspicion of sexual abuse. He was placed into foster care. There were allegations that he molested a small child while in foster care and thus the Department for Families and Children came knocking on the foster family's door to attempt to snatch this boy from the home. Instead, the foster parent intervened and the police were called to order that a judge write a court order for removal prior to removing the teenager from the only stable environment he had. Psychologically, the very nature of these events would cause harm to this child, again, after everything else he'd been through. Finally, they did write the court order and the child was removed. He was placed back into his biological father's home (the home where the sexual abuse was alleged to have occurred) because they had no other foster homes to place him in or ones willing to take him. Later, this teenager would go on to eventually be charged with rape of his stepmother.

There is never enough screening with foster families. There is only so much screening the Department for Families and Children does to potential and eventual foster families. The system is overburdened and many social workers underpaid with caseloads too large to perform quality reviews and place the time needed on each and every case individually. It is "putting out fires" and this is how most departments operate. With budget cuts, these are always the agencies that get cut first.

What about the family of five small children whose parents are dying and can no longer care for them all together? What happens if the system cannot place them all together? What if one child is too old to be adopted for a family but yet the others are age appropriate? Are they separated, these siblings? Or, are they not given the opportunity for adoption into a "forever family" because of these issues? There are both scenarios that happen, neither one is ideal.

US governments harm children they seek to protect every day. The scenarios are endless. The need for more care, more services, and more time and attention to children is endless. Society is living in a vicious cycle. The less service, the more harm to children, the more they become adults who are not self sufficient, more likely to be involved in crime, drugs and unemployment/homeless situations. US governments harm the very children they seek to protect, every day. It's reality.

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