http://www.denverpost.com/failedtodeath
Warning: I am stepping up on my soap box!
So the Denver Post is uncovering details of massive problems (duh) within the county Dept. of Social Services in Colorado. I just wanted to post the link to the Denver Post's Failed to Death website for anyone who wants to delve into the nastiness. It's pretty heavy stuff. I know they are focusing on death as part of the major problem (which it IS) but I'd also like to see them talk to the good foster parents who are actually making a difference and not starving or killing kids but are caring for and loving their foster kids and also facing a whole other list of challenges within the system. Or what about bio parents who ended up benefiting from the intervention of social workers and those families were put back together and are doing well. I'd actually like to know if there are some success stories out there. Does reunification work? Or show the kids who were adopted within the system by foster parents and their lives were saved from the death that other kids were not. Or lets talk about all the messed up teenagers who languish in the system till they age out and get dumped on the street. There is much to share, both positive and negative that still needs to be heard.
There are also good social workers who still manage to do their jobs even though they are basically handed a big mess right from day one and told to sort it all out and make it work better (sound like the problem of a President you might know??) Maybe they could do their jobs better with a little help from the higher ups. Maybe it starts there. More social workers who just want to make a difference and keep all these kids safe but instead they are forced to sit in a pile of paperwork and push important problems to the side. Why would more social workers even want to enter this broken system? There are also tired, burnt out social workers who obviously aren't doing a very good job. The turnover rate for social workers is extremely high. Can something be done to change that? And why would more good foster parents want to wrap their lives around this mess? We need more help!
Gay marriage, abortion, immigration. These should not be top priorities in this country. Our foster care system should be right up there with all the things that all these politicians like to carry on about. Do we hear politicians stating their views on how to fix the broken foster care system? NO, because it is not even in the top ten or even twenty of their list of concerns. No one is doing anything to fix this. No one big enough anyway. Right now, the federal government says that the ultimate goal in all these cases is to reunite these families. Let the parents get as many chances as it takes to screw these kids up because it is not at all about the kids. Currently the system is set up for the bio parents, not the kids. What's best for the bio parents is of top concern, then the kids come next. Maybe.
There needs to be more accountability for parents who don't take care of their kids. My girls were taken from their home hungry, dirty, exposed to drug and alcohol abuse and were extremely delayed because of severe neglect and complete lack of social exposure. Were the parents jailed, fined, reprimanded, held accountable in any way? No, these parents were given visitation rights before the girls were even assigned a social worker, taken to a doctor for a check up and immunizations, or even seen by a therapist. And now that the girls are thriving because of very hard work on their parts, on the part of my family and friends, teachers, therapists, and anyone who has touched their lives since leaving their birth parents home, now that the girls are doing well, it's time to send them back. And this is the way the system currently works. (Or doesn't work, in my humble opinion...)
I don't have the answers, but I'm here and willing to help by taking kids into my home. To give them a safe and loving place to thrive. And I'd like to see more people join me but I know why they don't. Because it's messy, and scary, and not fun a lot of the time and the things that are happening in this system just don't make sense. Is it too much to ask to try to make sense of this and figure out a way that works? I believe that any way we do it, as long as the safety of these children is the top priority, it could be a way to heal this failure.
