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Research has indicated that "children who are placed in group homes are more likely to experience emotional disturbance and behavioral problems than those who are placed with families" (Perry 2006). According to Perry, this is because the foster family will provide a less disruptive environment for a youth than a group home, because a family environment is more structured to his or her normal life. Most social workers want to put children in the least disruptive environment possible in order for them to either keep or regain stability in their life.

So how can a foster family do this? A foster family must exhibit five things to be successful: communication, integration, flexibility, compassion, and patience. How a child reacts to a new environment will be based on the amount of success the parents, social workers, educational administrators, and other members of the community react to the child based on these five factors.

It is important that, before the child even reaches the foster family's home, there is an open line of communication between all the people involved in the child's life. This includes the foster parents, the child's case worker, the school administrators of where the child is moving, and the relatives of the child, if possible. The case worker is the per- son who needs to start the communication line, but it is the responsibility of everybody involved, and especially the foster parents, to maintain that communication line through the child's stay with the foster family.

Successful communication leads to the next step, which is successful integration. This integration process can take several forms based on the child's background and emotional experiences. Care must be taken in this process, because if there is a possibility--as there is in most cases--that the child will go back to a natural parent, then the integration must be flexible to make sure that the child can reestablish those ties to the natural parents. A successful foster family must treat the foster child as if he or she was a member of their immediate family. They must realize, however, that this child's needs may be different than those of their own children's (if they have children), so the structure the foster child lives under could possibly be different than the structure their natural children live under. This also needs to be explained to the natural children or other foster children in the household before the foster child comes to live with them.

Once the child arrives and is put in school, the communication line must hold firm to make sure that the teachers understand the child's problems and the best ways to ad- dress those problems. Parents and teachers need to make sure that they have adequate records from the child's past schools, and they need to speak regularly to see how the child is integrating into the classroom, such as with making friends, doing schoolwork, and getting involved in extracurricular activities. The administrators at the school also need to be made aware of any special medications or learning disabilities the child has in order to set acceptable guidelines for the child to follow and create the best learning environment possible.

A foster family has to be flexible. Children coming into their care will come with a wide range of social problems. These parents must be flexible enough to know that they cannot deal with a child who has been sexually abused in the same way they deal with a child who has lost both parents in a car accident. The school system also must be flexible enough to work with the parents and social workers to make the child's transition as smooth as possible.

The last two factors are interrelated: compassion and patience. If a foster family has compassion, they can begin to understand the problems the child is facing and work to find the help he or she needs. However, they must also be patient and realize that there are going to be bumps in the road. The process for a child whose social network has been severely disrupted is not short but a journey that the family will have to take with him or her throughout the child's entire stay.

Aging out refers to children who reach adulthood while in the foster care system. Each year, 20,000 children age out of the foster care program, and many of these children are still in need of support or services. Imagine a child who has just turned 18 and has been told to go out in the world with little to no social network. Imagining this leads a person to wonder not how a child learns to survive but how a child who is aged out is able to maintain his or her mental sanity. The unfortunate fact is that many of these children have a hard time coping with going out in the world without a social network. Only 2 percent of children who have aged out of foster care obtain a four-year college degree. Thirty percent of these children are without adequate health care, and 25 percent of these children have been homeless at some point in their life (Child Welfare League of America 2006).

These numbers for youths transitioning out of foster care are dramatic. They also cause one to pause and ask, what are the options? A system that can keep the children in foster homes a few more years in order to ease into the transition away from the foster care system is one avenue that probably needs to be examined. Also, scholarships for children in foster care for college or job training is another area that might be beneficial in assisting the transition from foster care to adulthood. Encouraging adoption may be another step in helping children to find a permanent family.

Although these ideas may ameliorate a crisis, they do not get to the root of the social problems that cause children to be placed in foster care. There needs to be an increased emphasis not only on what happens to children after they get out of foster care, but also preventing them from getting into foster care. Foster care is the intersection where all social problems meet, and, in order to stop children from entering the system, society must confront the social and structural problems within the country that created this intersection.

References:

Bernstein, Nina, The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care. New York: Vintage Books, 2001.

Children's Defense Fund, www. childrensdefense.org

Child Welfare League of America, Special Tabulation of the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting System. 2006.

Child Welfare League of America, Quick Facts about Foster Care. 2010. www. cwla.org/programs/fostercare/factsheet.htm

Curtis, Patrick A., G. Dale, and J. Kendall, The Foster Care Crisis: Translating Research into Policy Practice. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.

Krebs, Betsy, Beyond the Foster Care System: The Future for Teens. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006.

Lindsey, D., The Welfare of Children.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

National Association of Former Foster Care Children of America, www. naffcca.org

National Foster Parent Association, History of Foster Care in the United States. 2007. www. nfpainc.org/content/index.asp?page=67&nmenu=3

Perry, Brea, "Understanding  Social Network Disruption: The Case for Youth in Foster Care." Social Problems 53, no. 3. (2006): 371-391.

Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care, www. pewfostercare.org.

Stone, Helen D., Foster Care in Question: A National Reassessment by Twenty-One Experts. New York: Child Welfare League of America, 1970.

Wozniak, Danielle F., They're All My Children: Foster Mothering in America. New York: New York University Press, 2002.

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