SHOULD FOSTER CHILDREN PAY FOR THEIR OWN CARE OR THEIR PARENTS CARE

In New Hampshire, 8 to 10 years ago, the state waited until a female reached 18, and demanded that she start paying her mother’s foster care bill and her own, because she was earning money. The News Papers ran continious articles aginst what the state had done.

The governor stepped in and said no. and somehow did away with the cost, as most New Hampshire citizens were outraged about it.

This is the mind set in this country.

All people on welfare are no good. I remember as a child ,my foster parents talking to their relatives from out of state how hard they work running the farm, when actually it was the many foster children they had that did the work, and people on welfare should be made to work the county farm or die.

Why should anyone alive get welfare where there is plenty of work for all and even in 1952? As the years went by, this was reinforced by the school system that all welfare people are scum balls and should be hauled off to jail and the kids put in foster care.

GUESS WHAT

Foster care is welfare. I was sitting in class at New Hampshire College and we were discussing social conditioning of welfare recipients, I was well informed of the welfare system because my foster parents told me about welfare people and how bad they are.

My Professor asked how many of the class room was on welfare sometime during their life and quite a few raised their hands.

I sat there smugly with my hands down. I was thinking these are some losers, here trying to worm an education while on welfare. Then a young female call out my name and stated “Bill you were at the hearing for CETA saying you want to make it better for foster children and that you had 17 years of bad foster care.

 Were you not in foster care?

The Professor said yes that is welfare all of foster care is run and administrated by the welfare system.

I was floored, I was devastated, I was depressed, and I cried. It seemed like hours when I stopped crying. I had two kids at home, I had to go to work, I had to stop and see my friends, and I could not be crying, no one would understand, because I don’t.

BACK TO CLASS THE NEXT DAY

I went back to class with a little better composure.

         I realized that of the people on welfare, 90       percent are children, just children.

I realized then that my views were bad and that is why I am in school to learn about the world and I am not the only one who suffered and I can get by this thing and move on to help myself and others who are in the same plight.

The answer is not to slave foster children for the benefit of someone with a business. The farm my brother and I grew up on had raised and worked over 25 foster children long term by brutal beatings and threats.

They prospered for over 50 years without the assistance of a single paid worker. These foster parents got paid to enslave my brother and I for over ten years each.

If foster children become 18 before they graduate they are removed from foster care, and most likely will not graduate high school. Because the money stops the foster parents turn them away to make room for a paying child. Foster children are thrown out to a world that is cruel to those unprepared for life there.

Please understand that many times when a foster child becomes 18 years of age they themselves think that they can be on their own because they know it all, leave the home that if fact may keep them on for a while longer. 

Kids need to have a buffer zone up until the age 21 and with the new assistance laws kids could remain in the foster home until then.

But the age of adulthood is 18 and kids at that age think that they know everything and they want to try on their own. 

Should the foster parent be allowed and paid to monitor the foster child until they are 21 so they have someone to fall back on?  Just a thought.