Foster Care is a system in which children are placed into wards, group homes, or private homes of a state-certified caregiver. Children until the age of eighteen years old have no say in where they live until they become a legal adult. Many are abused, mistreated, and not loved in these homes. This system has done a great injustice. Once you are in the system there is no way to escape, and for many of these children it feels like a prison. People who work for the system place these children anywhere, without finding background on the families. That’s why many are abused and mistreated because nobody knows the families they place the children with. It is as if they just place them just to get rid of them. The foster care system is severely flawed as it is not sufficient to protect the health, needs, and welfare of the child.

As children grow older, many do not want to take them, especially starting at the

age of ten because most want a baby to adopt, not an older child. Dontay Davis was a prime example of this. Due to the fact that Dantay was 10, they did not adopt him. Many siblings without a permanent home don’t get adopted within the same family at the same time. This makes families drift apart and end up with a bad future. For Dontay, he clung to the dream of seeing his family again. At 19, he ended up in prison. While in prison, his siblings died, but he was not informed until after he was released.  

When the Harts adopted them they declined to adopt Dontay, the oldest at 10 years old. Days after that separation, which would become permanent, he tried to kill himself. He remained in the Texas foster care system for eight more years. Four of those years were in a restrictive “residential treatment center.” For all those years and until his siblings’ death he held onto the hope of being reunited with them. Then at 19, he was in prison. It was while he was in prison that his siblings died, but he did not learn of their deaths until after he was released.

 Dontay tried to kill himself after the separation. They did not support him whatsoever. Families being separated does not benefit anybody because people are being hurt in the process mentally and emotionally. Someone like Dantay, tried to take his own life because of this, and still nobody did anything to help him be reunited. All he had was hope that they would get reunited. 

(Gullapalli, Vaidya)

The foster system is severely flawed with children who do not have a say in their own lives, with children who get separated from their own family, and with children who get hurt, abused, and/or punished. Children have no say in who hurts them, whether it’s physical or emotional.

Works Cited

Gullapalli, Vaidya, et al. “The Damage Done By Foster Care Systems.” The Appeal, 18 Dec. 2019, https://theappeal.org/the-damage-done-by-foster-care-systems/

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