Imagine, if you will, being taken away from your mother and your father, without any warning at all. Imagine being taken away from your siblings, your pets, your stuffed animals and toys. Imagine being taken away from your bedroom, house, yard, and neighborhood. Imagine, too, being taken from all of your relatives, friends, classmates, and everything you knew. In addition, after all of this, imagine if you were suddenly thrust into a strange house, with strangers, and informed that this was your new home and new family for the time being. How might you feel? For thousands upon thousands of children each year, this is not imagination, this is reality; and the reality is one that is full of questions, full of fears, and full of trauma.
The placement of a child into a foster home is a distressing, harrowing, and life changing experience for a foster child. Placement disruption is the term used when a child is removed from a home and placed into the custody of a child welfare agency, and thus into a foster home.
For many, it is a frightening time, as the fear of the unknown can quickly overwhelm a child. Others are filled with anger, as they emotionally reject the idea of being separated from their family members. Feelings of guilt may also arise within the foster child, as the child may believe that he or she may have had something to do with the separation from the birth and/or foster family. Some children experience self doubt, as they feel that they simply did not deserve to stay with their family. For all, it is a traumatic experience that will forever alter the lives of foster children.
Many psychologists state that it is necessary for young children to form a relationship with at least one main parental figure or caregiver in order for the child to develop socially and emotionally.Yet, the removal of a child from his or her home, and placement into another’s home through foster care, often makes this difficult, traumatic experience. Often, the removal of a child from a home occurs after a caseworker has gathered evidence and presented this evidence to a court, along with the recommendation that the child be removed. Indeed, most foster care placements are made through the court system.
As distressing as this may be for a child, even more traumatic may be the removal from the child’s birth home comes without any notification.
These emergency removals oftentimes occur late in the evening, and with little to no warning for the children. As caseworkers remove a child from a home suddenly, most are unprepared. Foster children leave their home with a quick goodbye, leaving behind most of their belongings, with a few clothing and perhaps a prized possession hurriedly stuffed into a plastic bag. Before they know it, they are standing in front of you, strangers, people they have never met before. Against their will, they are in a strange home, their new home. With most children in foster care, it is a time of fear, a time of uncertainty, a time where even the bravest of children become scared. Indeed, foster children often have no control of this transition, no control where they are placed, and no control of when they will go back to their birth family. It is this lack of control that many times sends children in foster care spiraling into depression, various behavioral issues, and into a world of anxiety.
Issues from anxiety can manifest themselves in a number of ways. Perhaps the one that foster children face the most is separation anxiety, an excessive concern that children struggle with concerning the separation from their home, family, and to those they are attached to the most. Indeed, the more a child is moved, from home to home, from foster placement to another foster placement, or multiple displacements, the bigger the concern becomes. Those children who undergo many multiple displacements often times create walls to separate themselves in an attempt to not let others into their lives. In attempting to do so, many foster children end up lying to their foster families, as they try to keep their new family at a distance, and at the same time, give the child a sense of personal control.
Many times, children placed into foster care suffer from mental health issues. A placement disruption may be so severe to the child that it feels as if their entire world is falling apart. For them, it is. Everything they know to be true in their world is now turned upside down. Their mother and father are no longer there to comfort them when they are troubled, or afraid. The family they lived with, grew up with, laughed with, and cried with is no longer there to take care of them. The bed they woke up in each morning is now different. Far too many foster children, the school they went to, the teachers they learned from, and the friends they had formed relationship with, have also been taken from them. Instead, these children now live with a strange family, wake each morning in a different house, sit in an unfamiliar classroom, and are no longer surrounded by those who love and know them best. Children in foster care often struggle to best deal with and survive these traumatic events, as they struggle to adjust to a new home and new family. To be sure, the losses in their life, along with the lack of a permanent home, often times prevent these children from forming a secure and healthy attachment with a primary caregiver.
Issues from anxiety can manifest themselves in a number of ways. Perhaps the one that foster children face the most is separation anxiety, an excessive concern that children struggle with concerning the separation from their home, family, and to those they are attached to the most. Indeed, the more a child is moved, from home to home, from foster placement to another foster placement, or multiple displacements, the bigger the concern becomes. Those children who undergo many multiple displacements often times create walls to separate themselves in an attempt to not let others into their lives. In attempting to do so, many foster children end up lying to their foster families, as they try to keep their new family at a distance, and at the same time, give the child a sense of personal control.
Other anxiety disorders include obsessive-compulsive disorder, where a child repeats unwanted thoughts, actions, and/or behavior out of a feeling of need. Panic disorders find a child experiencing intense bouts of fear for reasons that may not be apparent.
These attacks may be sudden, and unexpected, as well as repetitive in their nature. Panic disorders also may coincide with strong physical symptoms, such as shortness of breath, dizziness, throbbing heart beats, or chest pains. Another anxiety disorder that foster children may face includes social phobias, or the fear of being embarrassed or face the criticism of others.
Dealing with separation and loss is difficult for anybody. As an adult, you have had experience with this, and know who and where to reach out to when in need of help. Foster children, though, generally do not know how to handle these feelings and emotions. Yet, these feelings must be released, in some fashion. One way of expressing these feelings of isolation is to lash out in anger and frustration to those around them. Though foster children do not necessarily blame you, the foster parent, or the caseworker, the feelings of frustration and loss are strong within them, and you may be the only one they can release them to. Anger may also result in destruction of property or items within your foster home, as the child lashes out.
Other anxiety disorders include obsessive-compulsive disorder, where a child repeats unwanted thoughts, actions, and/or behavior out of a feeling of need. Panic disorders find a child experiencing intense bouts of fear for reasons that may not be apparent. These attacks may be sudden, and unexpected, as well as repetitive in their nature. Panic disorders also may coincide with strong physical symptoms, such as shortness of breath, dizziness, throbbing heart beats, or chest pains. Another anxiety disorder that foster children may face includes social phobias, or the fear of being embarrassed or face the criticism of others.
To be sure, there are high levels of mental health problems with children under foster care. The majority of foster children face the reality that most mental health problems are not being addressed as needed.
Furthermore, psychological and emotional issues that challenge foster children may even worsen and increase, rather than improve and decrease, while under placement in foster homes and care. Foster children, in many cases, do not receive adequate services in regard to mental health and developmental issues and will not likely do so in the near future, due to lack of government funding and lack of resources, as well the simple matter that child welfare caseworkers are understaffed and overworked, in most states across the country.
