Assignment 16 - Elizabeth Moore - KY Foster Care Speech

I vividly remember as a 5-year-old throwing obnoxious tantrums each time my parents left for work… I’m sure each of you have similar memories of that sinking feeling you got as a kid when you thought your parents were abandoning you. But with loving, stable families, all of us had the assurance that we would be reunited with our parents mere hours after our loud displays of emotion. Every day, maltreated children in Kentucky are torn from their families and everything they once called home with no promise of reunification. As a result, Kentucky social services currently has custody of 11,500 abused and neglected children and teenagers in need of the same love and support that all of us have received.

According to Fonda Walker, a Social Services clinician in Kentucky, children usually enter foster care following some kind of parental abuse: physical, verbal, emotional, or sexual; or following a parent’s arrest, which often occurs due to substance abuse. The primary goal of Kentucky’s Foster program is to provide children safe homes and positive relationships in the hopes of ultimately reuniting them safely with their birth family. And positive experiences with foster families and family preservation services dramatically improve children’s emotional health and future success, so it’s important that these programs are sufficiently funded and staffed with empathetic foster parents from around the state.

Most children removed by social services feel neglected, unloved, and may have been abused. They oftentimes have social, psychological, and behavioral issues because of this maltreatment. But, according to a study published in the Journal of Social Work, foster children who develop a secure relationship with attentive foster parents gain a capacity for introspection and empathy, are more equipped to handle emotional distress, and develop psychosocial resilience. These skills improve the flow of children’s reunification with their birth parents and prepare foster children for future hardship and adulthood. Clearly, the supportive and loving relationships built through the foster care program have lifelong impacts on children, even those who return to their birth families.

But regardless of inadequate parenting, children who enter the foster system are still emotionally attached to their biological family. And many biological parents make bad choices, face the consequences, and decide to work towards a second chance: regaining custody of their children. For this reason, reunification of children with birth families is the priority for social services programs. In fact, with the support of foster families, 35 percent of children are released back to parents or primary caregivers, reconstructing broken families. This would not be possible without the help of family preservation services offered by the government, which include parenting programs, reunification counseling, respite care, follow-up-services to support families in the process of reunification and healing, and even programs that help prevent situations from escalating to child removal. All of these programs attempt to ensure that children who return to their biological parents will continue to experience the same love and support at home that they found in their foster families.

The positive impacts of the foster system and supporting programs on children and their families is immeasurable. But the Kentucky Foster Adoptive Caregiver Exchange System, or KY FACES is extremely underfunded. According to the national Children’s Bureau, Kentucky social services has custody of 23% MORE foster children than the national average. And yet, we spend 21% LESS on foster care than the national average. That means we’re spending less money … on more children. Kentucky’s current programs are proving relatively effective, but with increased funding, they could touch the lives of more families on a more intimate level and improve child wellbeing across the state.

But for foster care and any of these currently underfunded supporting programs to make a difference in children’s lives, there must be a large pool of dedicated foster parents. The stereotypical image of a self-serving foster parent clandestinely embezzling government grants intended for their foster child is just that: a stereotype. In fact, most foster parents rely on their personal funds to supplement the meager $24 daily government allowance for childcare. Raising a child costs around $38 per day. Increasing the government stipend to $38 would eliminate the financial constraints preventing potential parents with low incomes from fostering. Enlarging the pool of available parents through a stipend increase is an important step towards improving the parent to foster child ratio in Kentucky. Most fosters are like Melanie Watts, a former police captain who wanted a single child, but who ultimately took in four foster children because no one else would. But the few generous parents are stretched too thin. With around 8,000 children still in need of safe and loving foster homes in Kentucky alone, there just aren’t enough foster parents to go around. There’s a global demand for willing parents, but don’t think adopting a child from another country is the only noble way to help. There are children yearning for love and attention right here in Lexington. And because they’re in the foster system in the hopes of reunification with a Kentucky birth family, they can’t be moved to homes outside of the state, meaning Kentucky foster families are there only hope. That’s why it’s incredibly important to foster and adopt locally.

Ultimately, the foster system at it’s finest is an incredible resource for child development, biological family reunification, and potential adoptive families. But in order to function properly in Kentucky, the foster system needs better funding and local foster parents. And that’s something that we can achieve. We are the next generation of leaders and foster parents. So whether you go into government, can afford to donate, or better yet, take in a foster child yourself, make a difference in the lives of these needy children.