Hello good people. As much as I'm not a victim of the injustice by Child Protection agencies, I am angry. Look at the name of these agencies, what does it say? Child protection. If my English is anything to go by, protection means to keep safe. However, instead of being safe havens, Child Protection agencies are now a child's worst nightmare.
Let me explain so that you get to understand where my anger is coming from and why I was moved to join the family protection movement. Taking a child from their loving parent(s) causes so much more than a family breakup, you are redefining a child's entire life for the worst. One minute they have parents, siblings, and a place to call home and the next minute they are in a new environment surrounded by total strangers.
I can't even begin to understand the things going on in a child's mind at the time. "Where's my mum?" "Why aren't my parents coming to get me?" "Did I do something wrong?" "Where is my sister/brother?" "When can I go home?" The worst part is, most of these questions will go unanswered, meaning a child will grow up thinking they were unloved and abandoned.
Moreover, so that you truly understand the depth of this injustice, here are some of the implications of growing up in foster care and the effects they have on a child:
Abuse and Neglect
It is contradictory that the state claims kids are being taken from their parents due to 'neglect' only to place them in worse of conditions. Sure there are good foster parents, some who even eventually walk their foster kids down the aisle but not all are saints. Some are in it for the cheque while some are child predators and see it as an easy way to satisfy their immoral desires.
As you have probably heard, read, or watched, there have been numerous cases of sexual and physical abuse to kids and child neglect in foster homes. We have also heard of situations where children died under 'mysterious' circumstances while in the system!!
Attachment Issues
When a parent loses custody, most children end up in foster care. And at that moment, a child is denied a normal childhood. He/she must then learn to adapt to a new environment and in some cases, repeatedly, if the child gets bounced from home to home.
As the number of times a child is moved increases, so do his/her attachment issues. Some of the consequences being rule/law-breaking, trust issues, unable to form a healthy attachment to others, poor social skills, general life failure etc.
Mental Health Problems
The whole process of being separated from their parents and being placed in a foster home subjects children to immense emotional stress and damages their sense of identity. As a result, most of these children start to exhibit mental disturbances which could be in the form of depression, anxiety, PTSD, anger outbursts etc.
Relationship Problems in the Future
Although a child eventually grows up and leaves foster home, their childhood trauma is still very much a part of them. So when they fall in love and get into relationships, they make it hard for their partners to stay. Why? Well, according to Jessica Wendroff a former foster care child, their attachment issues cause them to either be too needy and suffocating or too distant and private.
They will tend to isolate their partners from other people, require constant reassurance that they are loved, have trust issues, be extremely jealous, have trouble sleeping alone, be unable to leave toxic relationships, make their partner their world and end up losing themselves and their partners and go back to being all alone.
Tell me, in what world can the above translate to protection? In what world does this mean justice? Taking children from the arms of their loving parents only to release them into a world full of potentially terrible outcomes. I mean, is this a game? Who'll make it, who won't?
A big thank you to all the good foster parents out there. However, even with them for parents, a child will still come out with scars, why me? It hurts even more when the child grows up to find out he/she was never meant to be in the system in the first place, that they had loving parents whose only fault in the unjust eyes of the law was that they were not rich enough.
You cannot value a parent's love by how much they own. Situations change. SHAME on the system, on some of those Child Protection Agencies, and for anyone that has ever or has a hand in tearing up a loving family on uncalled for grounds.
