For these reasons, the foster care system often does exactly what it is trying to protect against. Rather than saving children from abusive homes, it is placing them straight back into the environments that they were taken from. However, the true question is why do foster care programs not work. With the government pouring money into these systems, it seems as though they should be working. So why do they not? The answer lies in two specific faults of the foster care system: understaffed programs and corruption. One foster care mother declared that “for the first 18 months, she had to deal with 22 different child care workers and that, in the course of three years, she only saw child-welfare workers five times” (McFadden). The reason why these workers seem to rarely do their job is because they are overworked, also due to the fact that the system is understaffed. In an anonymous survey of over 1,500 people, social workers “said they were stressed out by handling as many …show more content…
For example, the Tennessee Baptist Children’s Home in Brentwood has acquired a wonderful track record with keeping foster children from harm. By operating outside of state money, the workers are focused on the children rather than their paychecks. Furthermore, Tennessee Baptist Children’s Home refuses to switch children from house to house. This organization is fully prepared to keep children for long periods of time within the same home. Thus, they minimize the chances of children developing detachment disorders. One other benefit of TBCH, as discussed by social worker Rees Greenman, is “felt safety,” meaning that the campus is accredited and approved by the DCS, the health department, and the fire marshal. This feeling of safety can increase the chances of children improving psychologically. In other words, children are the most emotionally stable when they are in a safe