Devastating life events such as chronic family dysfunction, abuse and neglect, multiple
placements, poor decisions by the court or mistreatment by court-appointed caregivers take a toll on the immature mind.
To cope, we may withdraw into a prickly shell to protect our minds from the confusion and our
hearts from the pain. Trust issues make it difficult to share feelings for fear of being hurt again.
Aggression, crime and delinquency symbolize inner-turmoil. Drugs and alcohol offer temporary relief from unending psychological pain.
This unhealthy existence before and during foster care sometimes leads to specialized child
welfare placements, such as juvenile reformatories, mental health facilities or substance abuse
programs.
But failure to mend a foster child’s mental health issues, not just control the symptoms – or even
worse, failure to notice or treat them – will likely handicap her long after emancipation.
As foster care alumna and child psychologist Dr. Rosalind Folman states so incisively on pages
“Most children enter foster care already traumatized. They view the world as an unstable and uncaring place where adults cannot be trusted and tend to regard themselves in negative terms, including bad, worthless, undeserving and unlovable. They also often lack the emotional resources that are necessary to develop healthy relationships, such as the ability to trust, to care and to empathize. Despite these overwhelming barriers which hamper children’s ability to adapt to a family setting, foster care focuses its energy on attaining permanency, as if that alone would solve their problems, and invests relatively little in helping children to overcome their trauma and facilitating their development. If foster care professionals do not make every effort to change the way that children view the world and build up their inner strengths, these children probably will not be able to benefit from their placement experience, whether it be temporary or permanent, or transition successfully to adulthood. In other words, foster care must become a preventive measure that is not only intervention to alleviate immediate crises, but one that could and should prevent life-long disastrous outcomes. All else is secondary.”
Melanie Barney corroborates Dr. Folman’s observations on page109 of Growing Up in the Care of Strangers: The Experiences, Insights and Recommendations of Eleven Former Foster Kids:
“Growing up in the care of strangers affects a child’s mind, and the circumstances that led to removal from the family usually involves trauma. Similarly, the insecurity that results from multiple placements and living with foster parents not suited to raising foster children blunts their emotional growth. Burdened by years of unresolved issues and questions, we often leave the foster care system with psychological problems that limit our ability to mature emotionally … I suspect that is one reason why so many of us end up enmeshed in other government systems as adults, rather than successfully transitioning to independence.”
Youth placed in out-of-home care deserve – no, require – regularly scheduled mental health
sessions with a qualified therapist throughout their placement and access to psychological
services after leaving the child welfare system.
Former foster and psychologist Dr. Capri Cruz sums up the importance of mental health
intervention in the lives of foster youth on pages102-103 of Emancipating from the Care of
Strangers: The Experiences, Insights and Recommendations of Ten Former Foster Kids:
“My life experience has taught me that child welfare professionals and foster parents must take responsibility for protecting the already abused, neglected or orphaned youths in their care from further trauma and make routine counseling mandatory throughout their placement and available after emancipation. Shelter, food and clothing are not enough. We need to have healthy minds, too; otherwise, we will not be mentally prepared to transition into the real world successfully. Young people suffering from trauma cannot develop healthy self-esteem if they cannot make sense of their suffering. Their minds will remain fragmented and unfocused, resulting in a less positive placement experience and emancipation outcome.”
Coping with issues related to the death of parents, severe family dysfunction, abandonment or
abusive and neglectful foster parents are but several examples of psychological problems that
can negatively affect a child’s emotions and behaviors during placement and long afterward. The earlier these issues are identified, the less time they have to confuse the mind and the sooner proper treatment can remedy them.
Just as physical wounds left to fester blemish the human body, psychological wounds that go
untreated – or are mis-treated – leave an indelible mark on a foster child’s impressionable mind.
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