[tickle]

And kids of parents who abuse drugs don't starve and are not put in the streets now--there's this great program called "foster care".

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Foster care isn't a ride in the park. It's a death sentence for some, or a fate worse then death. I could tell you horror stories of that option, beatings, starvation, etc. Most Childrens' Aid Societies (who recommend to Foster Care) are over worked and under funded, so they don't their asses from a hole in the ground. If my comments offend some here, I can tell you I have had to go in some of these Foster Care homes and give second opinion of care before the kids are thankfully taken out, only to go again... yes guess what... more foster care.

Tick on a soap box

[Synnen]

Foster care IS a horrid option the way the system currently stands.

However--many of the people I know that would make TERRIFIC foster parents won't do it because they don't want to get attached to a child, only to have the child given back to the parents that abused him/her in the first place.

Betcha you'd get more and better foster care parents if they knew they weren't giving their time and energy and love only to have the state say that the parents who couldn't take care of their child in the first place have been "rehabilitated" and can get their children back--only to relapse again and again.

One child I knew in foster care HATED foster care--not because it was worse than her life with her parents, because it most certainly was NOT (the abuses she went through were of the worst kind you can imagine), but because they kept putting her in foster care, giving her back to her mother to abuse some more, then putting her in a DIFFERENT foster care family the next time.

If her mother had lost her parental rights the FIRST time, she would have been adoptable at age 5, but by the time they finally yanked her mother's parental rights, she was 14 and lost in the system--and VERY few people will adopt a 14 year old with emotional and mental issues from abuse.

The problem isn't foster care. The problem is that we are too lenient on parents that REALLY screw up the first time. No parent that sells their child for drugs should EVER get another chance at parenting. No parent that can't stay off crack while pregnant should get a chance to parent that child--an infant, even crack addicted, is EMINENTLY adoptable. An 8 year old addicted to drugs with behavioral issues because her mother was never a parent is NOT.

HOWEVER--the system as it stands is very flawed. Bonuses based on children placed or adopted makes false accusations more likely to result in kids being taken from parents who actually DID do nothing wrong--a spanking in a park is not child abuse, for example.

Either way-=it's too easy for just anyone to have a kid and have rights to the kid. I don't know exactly how to fix the whole thing, but a good start would be stopping people who can't afford the kids they ALREADY have from having MORE kids.