Throwaway Kids: 'We are sending more foster kids to prison than college’ (kansascity.com)

I encourage everyone read this Kansas City Star article. I don't think any of us will be surprised to hear there is a pipeline from foster care to prison. The Star was, among other things, trying to determine how large this problem is. I do not disagree with this premise but have another concern. The article is quoted as:

" Overall, 5,889 inmates responded to The Star’s confidential survey. Of those, 1,446 said they had been in foster care."

That 1,446 inmates represents almost 25%. What I would like to know about is the other 75%. For decades now we have created mandates that strongly encourage family unification or reunification. We try to wrap services around the parents so that the children can remain with the biological parents or be returned as quickly as possible. We started this because we have known for decades that removal of children and placement into care is also traumatic for children. 

So who is tracking the short and long term affects of this new plan of keeping children with their parents? Since we know, through the ACEs study, that 64% of us grow up in dysfunctinal homes and that this dysfunction leads to social problems like crime and imprisonment. I think if we are going to examine the foster care system we should also be examining the system that is keeping children in their biological home. Shouldn't we also be examining the other 75%? 

My point is not to discredit either system but to provide a fair assessment to the public that once dysfunction is happening the child welfare system can't erase the harm that has already happened to the child. If the system can show that a significant percentage of families do improve through services then that is wonderful. Do we really know that? Since we have put much effort, time and money into this program for decades there should be some data. At this point we should be able to capture some long term data too. 

We can't ignore these children or their situations. There only seems to be two paths foster care or intact families with services. That isn't the fault of  child welfare. So what do we do?

We can try making improvements to the foster care system. Unless there are more families willing to step up and foster that is really problematic. However, we push forward and try. We can provide services to biological parents but unless these parents are really trying to improve their own lives that is also problematic. We know that many of these parents came from generational cycles of family dysfunction. Still we plug on forward.

It seems it is time that we make parenting and child development education a priority in all of our high schools. This type of education must be reaching all students. We can't expect teens to just understand that their is dysfunction in the adult world. Reducing the number of children traumatized in the future will only happen if, as a nation, we get out in front of this problem through education. Most of our schools have trained parenting and child developent educators known as Family Consumer Science teachers. The problem is these courses where offered are considered electives with about 10% of the student popuation choosing to take these classes. More than 80% of us become parents. That is a gap we must close if we want better outcomes for the future.