Foster Care Research Paper

A Child and Caregiver Perspective

Rosalie L. Noren

Blackburn College

This article is about how the transition into foster care can be hard for a child. Many social workers, psychologists, and therapists analyzed how a child's care and environment could affect their internal and external behavior. The social workers, psychologists, and therapists also studied how children in foster care defined their relationships with his or her foster parents. The researchers then asked foster parents how they defined the relationship between themselves and their foster child. The article ties the two main focus’ together to show how a child’s internal behavior such as depression, anxiety, withdrawn self-esteem; and external behaviors such as incarceration, pregnancy, homelessness, substance abuse, defiance, and running away can be greatly altered based on how he or she is treated in a foster home (Orme & Buehler, 2001).

Introduction

I believe this paper held very well information and statistics on children in foster care. The foster system can be a mess because so many children are being placed in foster homes where they face maltreatment and negative behaviors. With the growing numbers of foster children finding a good, safe foster home is becoming hard to find. Many people apply to foster simply for money from the state. Few qualifications exist to be a foster parent and in some states, check-ins on foster homes are rare because of a large number of children in the system and not enough social workers. I wanted to bring attention on how allowing almost anyone to foster can affect a child mentally, physically, and emotionally. I believe this paper held very important information and statistics showing how being placed in a bad home can permanently damage a child’s outlook on life and his or her