Foster Parents

I spoke with several Foster Parents about their experience with caring for Foster children. I was surprised to here that some of the foster Parents said that this is a job and this is an at home job. I feel that Foster Parents who feel this way should not have foster children in their care. The reason why I say this is because being a foster parents means to love, respect, take care of, the children who are lef tin your care. These children are taken from their love ones and are placed with someone else. As a teacher I care for children everyday, I don't go to work and say I'm just here for the money, because every body knows that there is no money in child care. We all understand that but I care and I want to make a difference in the lives of all children.

Learning about Foster children

Foster parents says teachers and foster parents both require more understanding of students without permanent families. They need "to become better trained in identifying children with different educational needs than the classic child. A child in foster care is rarely able to work and concentrate on class work when their lives are in turmoil," When placing foster children in a child care center, they have to make sure that these children our sociallly, physically, mentally ready to be placed in a childcare classroom. When children are taken from their parents and placed with strangers, then placed in a preschool with teachers who are also strangers to these children. My questions is how can this affect foster children? How can this affect the classroom and the other children in the classroom?

How to Reach the Children

First a foster child lands in a strange family; then gets shuffled into a classroom filled with more strangers. Math assignments are different. Books carry titles the child has never seen before. Even the location of the toilet stalls creates a puzzle. Yet this is school for thousands of school-age children who become wards of the state.
School encompasses an entire world for children; it's what they do for over six hours a day. Imagine, then, how they feel trying to maneuver through a vast, unfamiliar educational universe�at the same time coping with a new home, new adult authorities, new rules.
Foster children drop out from school at twice the rate of other children, a 1997 study shows. Researchers generally attribute this greater risk to repeated transfers from one foster home to the next, where valuable credits, school records and social networks are lost and curriculums and standards differ.
Many of these children arrive with impairments due to prenatal drug and alcohol exposure. Further, foster children are estimated to lose six months of emotional development with each new placement. So a 14-year-old with four lifetime placements is closer in age emotionally to a 12-year-old�a clear challenge in any classroom.
How do these children cope? And how can teachers, foster parents and other authorities better guide these most vulnerable children?

Love for Foster Children

   Foster care is a protective intervention designed to provide out of home placement to children living in at-risk home environments.  I did a study on the foster children inside of different homes and foster care and inside of the foster care facility. This study employs prospective to investigate the effects of foster care on the development of child behavior and psychological functioning taking into account baseline adaptation prior to placement and socioeconomic status at the time of placement. Comparisons were made among three groups: children who experienced foster care, those who were maltreated but remained in the home, and children who had not experienced foster care or maltreatment despite their similarly at-risk demographic characteristics. In the current sample, children placed in out of home care exhibited significant behavior problems in comparison to children who received adequate care, and using the same pre- and post placement measure of adaptation, foster care children showed elevated levels of behavior problems following release from care. Similarly, children placed into unfamiliar foster care showed higher levels of internalizing problems compared with children reared by maltreating caregivers, children in familiar care, and children who received adequate caregiving. Findings suggest that outcomes related to foster care may vary with type of care and beyond the effects associated with maltreatment history, baseline adaptation, and socioeconomic status. Foster care service need a lot of advocate to help with studies to find out more to help these children.^a

Foster children are crying for help:

 Children in foster care have no win in the world. They are crying out for our help, are we helping, are we caring, are we doing the things that we were taught to do. My name is Pamela Pittman I have been working in childcare over 16 years. I have been placed in several YMCA programs because I'm a strong teacher. And I'm able to make sure that each child learn life skills to function in our world today. I work with foster children and this have been a struggle for me. I've never thought that I would have a problem with teaching children. Foster children have change me, the reason why I say this is because after working with foster children for a year I realize that I need to become an advocate for them. I need to be their voice, I need to help in any way I could. I realize that their are so many foster parents who does not care. So many children have been placed in Foster care and have been beaten and rapped while in the homes. What kind of Association can this been to take a child from a terrible situation and placed them in a more worst one. Can you all give me your feed back on how you think that I could change this?  How I can help those children in foster care? How I could become their voice?

Pamela New Blog

I just started my blog