@onesmallenby on Tumblr

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isthatafuckinggayangel

chaser

Boss is asleep, cannot stop me from frogposting

chaser

First like and this has already found its intended audience

chaser

uh oh

itsmyturnonthegender

onesmallenby reblogged

brainrotarchive

blabla dean deserved better blablabla cas deserved better...what about literally every single woman in spn whose existence was tainted by misogyny from the start THEY DESERVED BETTER

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just-anarchie

theblackparadeisdead

People who hate the south because they think that it's just full of racist white hicks are literally like my least favorite people on the planet. Wdym you think the part of the USA most directly influenced and shaped by black culture and experiences is just only super racist and white. Have you ever been to SEATTLE

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mysteriouseggsbenedict

I love Matilda because it's a story about a child who sees injustice around her and gets mad about it and questions why things aren't fair, and instead of the ending being that she learns how the world works and that life isn't fair, she catapults one of the adults who abused her out of a building with her mind

onesmallenby reblogged

howldean

fursasaida

adult life is truly just thinking “I NEED TO CLEAN” while dealing with the 17 other things that have a hard deadline

onesmallenby

y’all will bitchify the sweetest of women to woobify the vilest of men

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just-anarchie

kimabutch

[writes about Jesus but it’s actually about being trans] [writes about being trans but it’s actually about Jesus]

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cock-holliday

missmentelle

Anonymous asked:

How do you think we can make the foster care system better?

missmentelle answered:

Honestly, by making sure as few kids end up in it as possible.

Contrary to popular belief, physical abuse is not the most common reason that kids end up in foster care. Only 13% of kids taken into foster care are there because their parents physically abused them. The biggest reason that kids end up in foster care is actually neglect - neglect is the primary cause of 62% of foster care referrals.

When you look at those numbers, though, it's important to remember that "neglect" doesn't necessarily mean that parents withheld food and necessities from their children because they were careless or lazy or cruel - it often includes parents who desperately want to provide the necessities to their children, but can't afford to do so. Many jurisdictions don’t really make a distinction between kids whose parents purposely starved them and kids whose working parent left them home alone because she couldn’t afford daycare - that makes it hard to really know what we’re dealing with here.

And you might be surprised to learn what child protective services considers to be "necessary" for children. In most parts of Canada, for instance, it is legally required that children over the age of 5 not share a bedroom with opposite-sex siblings. Having six-year-old fraternal twins share a bedroom would be categorized as neglect; technically, the parent is failing to provide the children with adequate housing. But of course, the genders of your children don't influence how much money you get from your employer or from public assistance. In my area, a mother with a boy and a girl is legally required to rent a larger apartment for her family than a mother with two boys - but it's up to her to find the money to afford that. Partitioning one room or co-sleeping with the children is not allowed, and is also considered neglect. It might sound ridiculous, but I have worked with multiple families that have faced the potential removal of their children because of this, even if family co-sleeping is the norm in their culture.

1 in 10 children in the US foster care system are there at least partially because their parents don’t have adequate housing. Keep in mind, there are 424,000 children in the US foster care system on an average day - that means that housing was a major factor for more than 42,000 of them. Before we can truly reform the system, we need to understand what it is, exactly, that we’ve created - and what we’ve created is an incredibly expensive, inefficient and culturally insensitive system that is stretched so thin by the task of “solving child poverty” that it can’t do what it was actually designed to do, which is protecting abused children. Instead of a child protective system, we have an intergenerational meat grinder that effectively turns traumatized children into traumatized adults who create more traumatized children to go back into the system. Around and around we go.

The question of how to “fix” foster care could be a doctoral thesis, and it’s a far bigger problem than any one person can solve. But my few cents as someone who has worked with at-risk and homeless youth for nearly a decade now would be:

Dramatically increase affordable housing. Trying to fix child homelessness with foster care is like trying to put out a grease fire with a sledgehammer - it’s not solving the problem, and it’s only causing more damage. Truly affordable housing would keep many families off CPS radar - if affordable housing was available, many victims of family violence would be better able to flee their violent partner with their children. Calls to CPS because families are living in cars or shelters would cease to exist. “Fixing housing” is easier said than done, but I don’t think we’ll ever solve foster care without also addressing this.
Decolonize child welfare standards. In most parts of the US and Canada, child welfare standards adhere closely to Western European parenting practices. Things that other cultures have been doing for generations - like co-sleeping - can land non-white families in trouble with CPS. And there are huge discrepancies in how child welfare standards are applied - wealthy white families can homeschool, deny their children medical treatment and co-sleep without CPS knocking on their doors, but Indigenous families cannot say the same.
Create universal affordable childcare. Many families needlessly end up on CPS’s radar because their parents cannot afford childcare. Single working moms of colour have found themselves losing their children - or even facing prison time - after leaving their children unsupervised to work or attend job interviews. Compounding the issue is the fact that many working-class parents have shiftwork jobs, making it even harder to secure childcare.
Improve access to free and confidential family planning education and services. People who find themselves with unplanned pregnancies that they are not financially or emotionally ready for are at greater risk of ending up on CPS’s radar. When people are given access to family planning resources, they are better able to delay pregnancy until they feel more prepared.
Improve wraparound supports and early intervention. Removing a child from a home is - and should always be - a last resort. CPS are often alerted to at-risk families before they reach the point where removal is required. To truly do their job of protecting children, CPS needs more resources to offer these families in order to help them stay together in a healthier way. Culturally sensitive in-home and community-based supports, including mental health supports, addictions supports, and material supports, should be immediately available to all families who are potentially at risk.
Offer greater support for placements within families or communities of origin. Sometimes parents unfortunately just aren’t a healthy or safe option for their children. There are always going to be cases where that’s simply the reality of the situation. Many of these children, though, may have a family member who would be willing to take them in with the proper supports - which they can’t afford on their own. Offering more resources to family placements could help a lot of children stay within their families of origin instead of being sent to live with strangers. Likewise, many children from small communities - particularly Indigenous communities - end up being sent hundreds of miles away for foster care placements because the resources for them simply don’t exist in their communities. Ending this practice and committing to caring for children in their own community would help children grow up more connected to their roots and culture.
Decrease CPS worker caseloads. Many of the systemic issues with the foster care system stem, at least in part, from how abysmally and unbelievably overburdened the system is. There are too few workers and placements for far too many kids. In the US, the average CPS caseworker has 67 children on their caseload - in six states, the average is over 100. Nobody can provide adequate care to a caseload of 67 children, many of whom may have complicated cases. It’s just not possible. The workload contributes to the immense amounts of burnout and high turnover within child services - the average turnover rate (how many staff quit every year) for most agencies is 23-60%, with some agencies actually exceeding 90% annual turnover. We have a system of new, inexperienced workers burning out and passing on their enormous caseloads to newer, even less experienced workers and everyone is worse for it.
Provide more training, resources and support for foster parents. Many of the children entering foster care have complex trauma, as well as complex mental or physical health needs. Some areas do a better job of preparing foster parents for this reality than others - and everyone suffers when foster parents don’t have the resources and education that they need to meet children’s needs.
Extend aftercare supports well into adulthood. Many youth make an abrupt exit from foster care - at some point between age 18-21 they suddenly “age out” of supports. Some areas do offer supports that extend into a youth’s early 20s, but many of these areas require youth to be full-time post-secondary students to continue receiving support - youth who aren’t able to take that step often have no support, despite perhaps needing it the most. Outcomes for former foster children are bleak; only around 55% finish high school (compared to 87% of their peers), and in Canada, as many as 90% are on welfare within 6 months of aging out of care. Realistically, as it becomes more difficult for young people to achieve financial independence, many of these kids may need support that extends well into their late 20s and beyond.

This is just barely skimming the surface of what needs to change - there is so much that’s wrong, and I’ve barely touched on how to fix it. But when it comes to foster care, I really believe that an ounce of prevention is worth 100lbs of cure.

MM

beatrice-otter

I read an article once about a social services program in parts of Baltimore, MD in the 70s (I could be wrong about some of the details, it's been a while since I read it). But basically, this program went around to childcare facilities, preschools, babysitters, and kindergartens and looked for the kids with behavior problems. Then they went to the families of those kids and asked how they could help.

Did the parents need parenting classes? Did the kid need medical help? Did the kid need additional childcare the family couldn't afford? Did the family need a larger support network of friends and family? Was there domestic violence going on, and if so, could it be stopped and/or could the abusive partner be separated from the family? Did one or both parents need addiction counseling or medical support? Did they need better housing? Did they need a better job? Did they need job training? What did the family need, and how could the social worker help them get it?

It was an expensive program to run; it required a lot of social worker time and a lot of wrap-around services. So it was cancelled in the 80s.

But the thing is, someone did a study comparing the neighborhoods where the program was run, and found that for every dollar you spent supporting that family when the child was young, you saved seven dollars by the time the kid was 18. The kid was more likely to graduate high school, less likely to commit vandalism and shoplifting and other petty crimes as an adolescent, less likely to join a gang, less likely to be removed from the family and placed in foster care.

For every $1 spent serving/helping families when the kids were young, the government saved $7 by the time the kid was 18. (And that doesn't count things like "businesses and residents saving money because there's less vandalism to fix")

But the program was closed because "it was too expensive."

It is much more expensive to put kids in foster care than it is to provide affordable housing. It is much more expensive to put kids in foster care than it is to provide food stamps/SNAP benefits. It is much more expensive to put kids in foster care than it is to do pretty much any of the things that will help keep them out of foster care.

Yet people will claim those things are "too expensive."

It's a lie. When you actually compare the costs, not only is keeping the kid out of foster care almost universally better for the kid, it is also cheaper for the government.