Many children throughout the United States are born into abusive families. These children have had life experiences that youth their age should not have to endure. This is when the state steps in and takes children away from their families. The child welfare system often places children in the foster care. Unfortunately, the foster care system is not always as helpful as it appears to be. A number of issues have risen from accounts of people who have gone through this system. Countless innocent children are being abused within the foster care system; however, more solutions are being suggested to fix the system.
Around 800,000 children a year are removed from their homes according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Some of the children taken away are eventually returned to their parents, however, many will never go back to their biological parents. If the parents or legal guardian of a child is involved with drugs or alcohol that would lead to the removal of the child. Crime on either the parents part or the adolescent part may also lead to the youth being taken and entered into the foster care system. The
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Sadly even more children are abused than actually reported, “research has revealed alarming rates of abuse in foster care. One independent study after another has found abuse in one-quarter to one-third of foster homes, and the rate in group homes and institutions is even higher. And for reasons related to study methodology...even those figures almost certainly are underestimates” (Richard Wexler). According to Wexler a majority of figures addressing the number of children abused are put together by the child welfare agencies. Which means that to make their programs look better they have a tendency to overlook warning signs of abuse within a youth’s foster