Foster care

So, today was our first foster parent class, and to be honest, I wasn't really impressed at all. It seems that the more we learn, the more it seems very much opposite of what we have come to expect of everything. My wife and I had a good discussion after the class today, and both had a feeling that this may not be for us.

Essentially, what we came to find out that almost all children in the foster care system have been sexual abused by someone as a child. This is very startling. I mean, the whole objective of foster care is reconciliation of the child to the biological parents. Even if they got removed from the home due to sexual abuse, whether it be from the father, mother or other acquaintances of the family. This is a very startling reality that we think we may not be able to handle. Knowing that a child that we may have will more then likely go back to the family that they came from. The system is broken. The people who want children cannot have them, and those that don't want them seem to have them all the time. It's a cruel life sometimes.

Another very vital piece of information that we found out, is that we pretty much do not have any guardian like rights until we adopt someone. If we wanted to get the child a hair cut, we need to get permission from the birth parents first. We wouldn't have any access to medical records or any confidential file. We essential have no legal rights to the child unless adopted. This is a huge wall for any adoptive parents.

We left today kind of defeated. The high hopes that we had for this experience is feeling very lopsided to the side of the biological parents. It's a shame that even though the bio-parents violated the rights of the children for whatever reason, their rights of what they are able to do isn't taken away very easily. The system is in dire need of being fixed.