A few links form around the web. Make of it what you will.
- Article in Newsweek, I call it: From foster care to sex worker
“Here’s the ugly truth: most Americans who are victims of sex trafficking come from our nation’s own foster care system. It’s a deeply broken system that leaves thousands vulnerable to pimps as children and grooms them for the illegal sex trade as young adults.”
“No child should have to face that. And yet, on May 3, 2018, lawmakers in my home state of Oklahoma voted to make it harder for foster children to find a loving family by allowing child-placing agencies that receive state and federal dollars, to put their beliefs ahead of the best interests of those children”
Briefly, the train wreck shit show sandwich that is the McDonald Trump administration somehow managed to include changes to foster care funding in their massive grifting scam to the rich. Money will now be put towards keeping kids WITH their families and on increasing intervention to prevent removal. How about that? The downside is loss of funding to group homes, large foster systems such as in L.A, New York and other very large cities. As I have log advocated for taking the family instead of the child, this is I think, a net positive. There may be short term pain but the ugly reality is that foster care is both short term and long term pain every day in every way. There will be no painless way to fix it. Would a Clinton presidency have done better? I dunno. My guess is that most democratic presidents would have tried to do both (long term funding and group home care for triage). But I am sure that Mike Pence runs a better email server than Hillary Clinton, so there’s not a dime’s worth of difference, amiright?
“We’ve inflicted the most devastating remedy we have on these families, then we’re basically saying, within a month, ‘Sorry, our mistake,’” he said. “And these families are left to deal with the consequences.”
A little reminder – every two minutes – that’s how often a child is taken into the foster care system.
