The Foster Care Dilemma

This is a progressive series of editions of the same title designed to make people increasingly aware of the debilitating conditions foster youth experience in urban environments. The inherent dichotomy between keeping them safe without destroying their sense of purpose manifests itself in extremely poor results with foster children in large bureaucratic settings. After spending as much as $40,000/year/youth, one quarter wind up in jail, a third become homeless and less than five percent graduate from college. There are charitable organizations in some of the poorest urban environments which produce stunningly better results with homeless children. The reason that this condition is allowed to prevail is because the population in general is unaware of the plight that 0.12% of its population is suffering. Even in Los Angeles County, the worst foster care environment in the country, the foster care segment still only represents 0.19% of its ten million people. Society has no business putting down its most defenseless members in this way and we need to examine our hearts and minds to resist and eradicate the greatest evils in a system that has become hopelessly bureaucratized, inefficient and needlessly expensive. We must be able to look forward to the day when politicians in large jurisdictions are elected partly on how well foster children do under their command. The state of affairs in foster care in industrialized societies is complex and in large part mirrors the morality of the least educated parts of their communities. It has become an integral part of displaced youth in urban environments. It would not be this way if the public would insist on changing it. The money is being spent, but mostly wasted. In a modest way The Foster Care Dilemma, Inc. charitable foundation aims to enlighten the public without attacking well-meaning people now working within the system. Once the legislators in the jurisdictions where the major problems occur come under the gun of their voters, they will insist on correcting the most obvious discrepancies. The examples in this book are typical and will bring to your attention the grave misjudgment foster youth are made to live through just to survive, never mind thrive. Most disconcerting was the almost wicked determination of some foster care providers to wreak mindless cruelty on the defenseless children in their care. Our expectation was that interviews of children out of foster care would be discomforting, but not to the heartbreaking extent that we experienced. We will add public input from many more experienced people until future editions will draw the attention of the New York Times best seller list.