Katrina still making an impact

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-23-katrina-foster-care_N.htm

[quote]Katrina rips up the few roots foster kids had
By Peter Eisler, USA TODAY

NEW ORLEANS — Shine White shuttled through nearly 20 foster homes in the decade before he landed in the care of Greg and Gretta Fortenberry. With their support, he tested into a top magnet high school and made the honor roll. With their trust, he became a responsible member of the household and a mentor to the couple’s other foster kids.

“It got to the point where I was calling them Mom and Dad,” says Shine, 17. “We were like a family.”

Then came Hurricane Katrina.

The Fortenberrys fled to Texas with Shine, three other foster children and their own two kids. They spent six months in Nebraska before they all returned to New Orleans. But life in the Big Easy was stressful, and the couple decided to give up being foster parents.

“My younger son eventually came to us and said he just wanted to be with his family. I’d always said that once my kids got tired of us (foster parenting), we’d let it go,” Greg Fortenberry says. “It was a tough decision, especially with Shine. But we’d done our turn.”[/quote]

kids are ungrateful ,foster ones even more so

And there are probably a whole lot more kids in need of foster care after the losses of the hurricane. I am looking into moving down to the Big Easy to teach for the 2008-2009 school year.

As for foster kids, many of those kids come from such hateful, abusive, and sad backgrounds that the slightest bit of kindness is taken in like a sponge. For many of them, being in a foster home is the first time they have ever felt safe. I will not go into the horror stories of my neighbor’s kids who were all brought into their home for foster care, but came to stay with the family through adoption (they couldn’t bear to let them go…all seven of the children they took in), but I can assure you that none of them are ungrateful for the love they receive from their new family.

“they couldn’t bear to let them go…all seven of the children they took in” and that is how it SHOULD be. Why foster if you can’t make the commitment? That’s like showing someone a plate of food and then going “Nope, you can’t have it. Neener!”

SAF ur wrong,
when the SS are profiling the fosters,they wanna be sure they see this as a job,and that they can let go,it’s sometimes not easy,true.

Might be good to keep in mind that many children who are in the foster care system, go thru several homes during the course of the year. What may look like ungratefulness, could also be seen as emotional detachment. Also, keep in mind that many foster care parents look good on paper, pass the screening, and still turn out to be a person’s worst nightmare. There is no true way to determine a person’s inclination to be a mental and emotional abuser.

[quote=“dablindfrog”]SAF your wrong,
when the SS are profiling the fosters,they wanna be sure they see this as a job,and that they can let go,it’s sometimes not easy,true.[/quote]
In my experience, and I do have much experience in this area, I’m not wrong.

I will agree with SAF~ A foster kid is worthy of the love of a parent as much as any other kid.

Wow, how incredibly sensitive of you to say that. :raspberry:

Many foster children are numb to the bone by the time they get into foster care. Cursing them for being ungrateful is like cursing a blind guy for not being able to read the newspaper.

And most foster parents should never have their own children, much less foster them. But rich stable people don’t like second hand goods.

Wow, how incredibly sensitive of you to say that. :raspberry:

Many foster children are numb to the bone by the time they get into foster care. Cursing them for being ungrateful is like cursing a blind guy for not being able to read the newspaper.

And most foster parents should never have their own children, much less foster them. But rich stable people don’t like second hand goods.[/quote]

i allowed myself to comment because i have first hand experience in foster care too.
my parents have harboured kids for as far back as i remember,and with just 2 exception out of something like 35 kids,i can say that ungratefulness is indeed the right word

[quote=“dablindfrog”]
i allowed myself to comment because i have first hand experience in foster care too.
my parents have harboured kids for as far back as i remember,and with just 2 exception out of something like 35 kids,i can say that ungratefulness is indeed the right word[/quote]

And why weren’t they grateful? Did you expect them to be overjoyed that someone would take them in after their own parents either couldn’t or wouldn’t?

I alowed myself to comment because I was in foster care from the age of 4 until I graduated high school. Did I show gratitude to any of them? Not much. Why? Because I wanted my own family and couldn’t understand why I didn’t have one.

Your parents took in 35 foster kids? I wonder if they also feel that most of them were ingrates.

being short term fostering i guess it was easier to keep in mind that it was like a “job”,the 2 exceptions i mentioned were 2 of those who remained with us for the longest time,but not all the long termer were showing signs of gratitude.

it’s a tricky world,very tricky,
one where neither parties knows where to stand…

[quote=“dablindfrog”]being short term fostering i guess it was easier to keep in mind that it was like a “job”,the 2 exceptions i mentioned were 2 of those who remained with us for the longest time,but not all the long termer were showing signs of gratitude.

it’s a tricky world,very tricky,
one where neither parties knows where to stand…[/quote]

It is tricky DBF, and I apologize for being snappy with you. :blush:

Short termers have a very tough time because they never get the chance to make a connection with the people they live with before they are shipped away blindly to a new home. A hardness builds up in them, and they actively seek to avoid making any connection with the foster parents after being let down a few times (as in they get placed in a home that seems nice, but later realize it’s a short term home and they move to a crappy home). Their coldness and lack of courtesy may seem ungrateful, but really it’s a defense mechanism thrown into place by fear, lack of trust and loss of hope.

And most foster parents really don’t have the skills to deal with kids who have these kinds of problems.

I’m wondering what sort of graditude one whould expect to see. And why such a demand is expected of a child who never made the choose to be born anyway. Besides, a person is looking for graditude as a result for such a service being preformed, then one should not be a parent/foster care provider.

Agree with that. Parents (biological or foster) should not expect gratitude from a child it is the parent’s choice to have a child. Surely it should be unconditional love from the parent to the child , right ? Why expect something back ? Or am I being too idealistic.

Now for a dog however is different as it should earn its keep, in my opinion.

Say, can a deputy criticise the sherrif like this?

I hope and pray this is picked up and run with in the US.

[quote]This is our Katrina disaster - Howard
THE crisis in Aboriginal communities is every bit as bad as the “human misery and lawlessness” that engulfed New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, John Howard says.

In a passionate speech in which he hit back at critics of his plan to wipe out widespread pedophilia in indigenous communities, the Prime Minister said there were children in this country “living out a Hobbesian nightmare of violence, abuse and neglect”.

[b]He said many people, including himself, were no longer entitled to be aghast at the failure of the US Government to cope with the situation in New Orleans in 2005.

“We should have been more humble. We have our Katrina, here and now,” he told the Sydney Institute. “That it has unfolded more slowly and absent the hand of God should make us humbler still.”[/b]

Last week he announced the Commonwealth would push aside the Northern Territory Government and, with extra police, doctors and the military, take control of about 70 Aboriginal communities for at least five years.

But up to 60 Aboriginal and community groups from all states and territories will deliver an open letter to Mr Howard today protesting against his plan, asking him to begin consulting indigenous people and develop a long-term plan that strengthens families and communities and addresses the underlying causes of the abuse such as unemployment, overcrowding and poor education.

Under the federal plan, alcohol and pornography would be banned, every child under 16 would have a health check, and welfare payments would be withheld, all in an effort to stabilise the communities and stamp out the widespread child abuse detailed in the recent report Little Children are Sacred.

Mr Howard wants the states, whose powers cannot be so easily overridden, to adopt similar measures.

“It will bring law, order and protection. Then we will start rebuilding,” he said.[/quote]

HG

Yes, I have experienced the “taking in of people as a job” environment having lived with host “families” both in France and the UK.

The thing is, kids in foster care are not looking for someone seeking thanks. As jdsmith said, every child taken from their family only wants to get back to that feeling of belonging and being loved.

When a foster family takes kids in like they are running a hotel, which unless your parents are really, really old and took all 35 children into their home one at a time, they most likely did having kids coming in and out on multiple schedules, a child feels resentful. Who wants to be in a family where they are treated like a hotel guest? Especially if they see that the family has their own children who are most definitely treated differently than the foster kids.

My friends had host parents in France who had only one student there at a time and included them in family events so they could get a feeling of what the culture was from a personal perspective. That is what a foster family should do - to help a child get a feel for what a loving family should be like so when they become older, they have an idea of how to provide that for their own children. Most foster families, however, are nothing more than small-time children’s homes, but with better furniture and food.

My French host family had students cycling in and out (they had four students living there at a time) and made their family events purely private and kicked the students out of the house on those special occasions. They had been running their “business” for over 30 years…wait a minute, dablindfrog… no, I’m kidding. It was simply a bed and breakfast and when I say “host family”, I go very light on the “family” and heavy on the “host”.

For that family (see, I’m bringing it back around to the OP) in New Orleans to have taken in a child for so long and helped lead him to achieve so much only to dump him off when things got tough, they just did exactly what his mother probably did when he was much younger. “Oh, it was hard for us,” claims they. Boo fucking hoo. Their kids aren’t wards of the state now nor were they led on to believe they were finally, for once, a part of a real family before being told that no, they were nothing to the family, but a financial burden.

Mei ban fa, Shine.

[quote=“ImaniOU”] As jdsmith said, every child taken from their family only wants to get back to that feeling of belonging and being loved.

[/quote]

even my parents couldn’t pretend to love those kids only days after they arrived ,but we’re pretty damn sure they were getting a lot more affection and care from day 1 in fostering than they ever got at home or in the orphanages.

that’s simply not true,i can say that foster kids often had it better than us,the real children,simply for the fact that foster kids were getting weekly allowances in money(through the foster agreement,not from my parents) ,which we did not.
also,they could get to be naughty without the risk of physical retribution,we weren’t that lucky.

i think you’re bringing a heavy baggage into this discussion but you should know that your own experiences don’t reflect the universal trend (i bloody hope not anyway)

it’s notorious that some foster families are in it for the money only,they fullfill the contract to the very letter,nothing more.

actually those type of families are regarded as the best foster houses by the screening committee because emotional involvement is strongly discouraged

comparing a proper foster system to a student hosting is a bit wrong,
i think it’s “right” to operate student hosting as a business,and in those cases it’s not wrong to run your house like a hotel if you’re comfortable with the pros and cons.

After caring for 62 foster kids ranging in duration of stay from 1 day to more than 6 years, I can say that no appreciation was expected nor (some rare exceptions) delivered. But I live today with the knowledge that these kids were better off for even the brief time in my home than being on the streets or worse.
If you really want to improve the world, help a kid!

Private dollars leading recovery of New Orleans
With government money for New Orleans trickling through the pipeline, private foundations, wealthy individuals, and philanthropies are playing a larger role than expected.