Sometimes a child will get lucky and be placed with foster parents who are loving and supportive and who consider that child their own. But for many, that doesn't happen. Kids are moved around from home to home, to group home and institutions, until they are 18, when they are considered adults and the system is finished with them.
I am extremely active in the foster care crisis in this country. Everything that I do is pretty much with the end goal of trying to make a difference in the lives of the children in foster care.
The most important element of the foster care system is getting kids out of foster care and into a permanent placement so they don't have to spend their entire childhoods in courtrooms, wondering if they will ever have a place to call home.
I don't think I'll do foster care or adopt, to be quite honest.
Despite the best of efforts, many foster children are neither reunited with their families, nor adopted.
As an adoptive parent myself of foster children, I have seen firsthand the glaring problems of the system currently facing this Nation.
Children in foster care are there through no fault of their own, and they face challenges that would test the resolve of even the most mature adults: frequent moves, early trauma, instability, and in many cases, abuse.
They shut down kids' homes, for a number of reasons, and I was part of that transition into foster care. That's all well and good if it's populated by people who feel their work is paid decently and supported.
I'm not proud of this, but I had a lot of misconceptions about American foster care. To me, foster care meant that a child would be placed with you, then taken away. I didn't want to go through all of that.
I was 16 when I entered the foster system, and know firsthand the statistics for 'aging out.'
