Foster Care and Emancipation

Paper Summary:

This paper concerns itself with the problems that foster children face, especially when they become emancipated and begin to live life on their own. It has often been suggested that many more African-American children are in foster care than are children of other races. In order to understand whether or not this is accurate, a thorough review of available literature on the topic is performed. Literature on this topic includes statistics, gender differences and cultural diversity. The problem statement concerns the disproportionate number of African-American children who are represented in the child welfare system and who are not adequately prepared to leave foster care through emancipation. The logical assumption would be that something is lacking in the foster care environment that causes great difficulty for children once they begin to live on their own. The literature review shows whether or not this is accurate and what may be lacking in the foster care environment. The possibility remains that it may not be the fault of the foster care environment, but rather may be the fact of other extenuating circumstances that have occurred in the child's life before they were placed in a foster home. More likely, it is not one or the other, but all of the factors together that cause problems for these children later in life. All of these suggestions are explored, in the context of the literature review, in order to begin to come to terms with the immenseness of this problem in society.

From the Paper:

"The older a child gets, the more difficult it is for that child to be adopted. Most children who get adopted out of foster care are under the age of 12, and are categorized as having special needs, although the general accounting office findings do not state whether that term is being applied to disabilities, or whether it is being applied to sibling groups or minority children. Children who are part of a group of siblings also have a difficult time getting adopted, since there is an effort made not to break up the family. Large groups of children, or even a brother and sister, are more difficult to adopt, as many couples who adopt children only wish to take on one child at a time. Consequently, this often leads to the breaking up of sibling groups."

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