Imagine being taken away from your parents, you've been placed into a new home with a new family. Your last family was unfit to take care of you, but now you're in better hands. Or so it seems. Six months later you're tired, beaten down, and slowly giving up on life. Your foster parents weren't as nurturing and loving as they seemed; although, the social worker who placed you in their care didn't know that, mainly because she didn't properly screen them before sending you into the home of strangers. Foster care reform is a drastically overlooked topic in America, which is becoming worse by the second. Although hundreds of thousands of children enter into the foster care system each year, foster care reform is a subject which is constantly …show more content…
The fact that more than half of females who were previously foster children will have children at such a young age is astonishing -- at 21 years old these young adults lack the resources to care for themselves, let alone a child. Six years after being emancipated, at 24 years old, only half of these foster children will be employed. At 24, it is important to have a steady source of income in order to support yourself. However, only 50% of these adults will be employed, while over 50% will become pregnant at a young age. Foster care children are also susceptible to experience post-traumatic stress disorder at a higher rate than U.S. war veterans. Let that sink in, children who experience America’s foster care system are more predisposition to post-traumatic stress than the soldiers who fought for our country. This should tell everyone something about the conditions of foster homes, and how they are affecting children. There should be a way to keep foster children in contact with their foster family after leaving the system, assuming they are on good terms, and maybe these young adults won’t feel so alienated or hopeless. Everyone needs an exceptional support system, and providing this to adults after they leave foster care may help them to find reliable jobs, and even reduce the rate of pregnancy at such a young age after leaving the