Reform Suggestions

These recommendations can be adopted nationwide.  They not only apply to each state, they can become a national model for change.

We encourage the federal government to adopt these recommendations as a major national plan.  We together, as one, can bring about change in the foster care system and the child protective system.

Our first concern is to ensure that no child suffers harm while in foster care.  “We do acknowledge that foster parents are capable of maltreatment,” as stated by the Ohio National Director, National Foster Parent Coalition for Allegation Reform (NFPCAR).

Our presentation comes because we are in touch with many former foster children and families who are in a process of healing their hurts caused by abuse or sub standard living conditions or maltreatment from their foster providers while they were in care by their respective states.

This is a sensitive subject that we address with much thought, understanding, and experience.    Sensitive care is needed for the children who are separated from their biological families under traumatic conditions.  Not only are they separated from their families and friends, but the very schools that they have developed a relationship with.  If a child must be placed into a family setting other than their own, we must make sure that the new family is not a temporary one and the child moved around until the agency can place the child in a planned living environment that will be successful.  Children must, at all costs remain in the same school system that they were attending before they were removed, because new schools discriminate against foster children also.  Unless the abuse alleged was from that school the child must remain there.