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Throughout the first few months we have done this Senior Summit, I have run into a huge problem. I went to talk to the social worker at Mountain Range High School to see if I could shadow her through her job. The social worker told me that would be impossible to do because of privacy reasons. If I were to shadow her, I would have to listen to a child's personal problems which is invading their privacy. However, she did decide to be my mentor and help me with my project in any way she can besides shadowing her. Therefore, with this issue I had to think of a plan b as soon as possible. I decided that I would look into children group homes in Colorado and try to see if I can volunteer and hopefully have a one on one with the kids there. I found two groups home in Colorado Springs that I am hoping to go and visit to start my research.

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I have been trying to do a lot more research on group homes in Colorado, so I could possibly try to shadow and volunteer. I want to do this because most kids in homes like that are struggling and they really don't want to talk to adults; therefore, I was thinking that it would be easier for them to talk to me. I did find a group home in Denver and I plan on going there.Today I went to visited the group home. Sadly, I ran through another problem. As I went in there and explained to them what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, they told me that I wasn't allowed to shadow or volunteer because I am underage. They told me that you have to 21 to volunteer and shadow because at my age, we wouldn't "understand." However, they did tell me that I am able to make a fundraiser or donate to them.

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I am planning on either having a fundraiser at the school, or put a donation box for toys, clothes, and money at my dads shop and hopefully have his customers donating to help these kids. I am currently writing a proposal for the school so they can approve my idea of starting a fundraiser for the group home. I think it's perfect for the spring time because we will have a spring assembly where they can announce to the school about the fundraiser and tell them to help donate. Also, if we start the fundraiser at the start of April and end it on my last day of school, which is May 6, than that will be enough time to get a lot of donations.

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I have decided to start contacting a couple of my friends who are actually adopted to see if they're willing enough to talk to me and let me interview them in person. Most of them said no at the idea because they didn't want to think about that time in their life and they didn't want to endure the pain that they had to go through at the time. Finally, one of my friends who was in the system till the age of 13 decided to talk to me. He wanted to do the interview, so people can realize that there needs to be a change in the system or else something bad can happen. I'm really excited that he said yes to this; however, I am nervous because I haven't seen him in awhile and I hope I don't pressure him into some of the questions.

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Through out these past few weeks, it has been very stressful. That is because of the pandemic going on around the world from COVID-19. It has caused me to go through a lot of struggles with a couple things. First, school was finally announced to be closed for the rest of the year and to begin online learning. This has ruined my fundraiser idea because I can't make donations for the group home and it wouldn't be safe to do anymore. It also has caused me to not be able to meet my friend in person to do the interview because it's not safe and I didn't want to risk it. However, him and I have decided to do a phone call interview. It will be a lot more difficult but I decided to do a script and hopefully a screen recording or video of me on the phone with him. It has caused a lot of bumps on the road but I still believe on learning more about this system. It might not be the most efficient thing to do, but it is the best I can do through this pandemic.

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For my Senior Summit, I knew right away what I wanted to research, learn, experience, and talk about. All my life I’ve always felt the need of helping others, mostly helping kids. I decided why not become a Social Worker. However, I didn’t know much about this career and life path, which gave me the perfect idea to have my Senior Summit about Social Working and the process of the Foster Care system. Since being a Social Working involves a lot with confidentiality, I wouldn’t be able to get a hands on experience with a child; however, I am able to volunteer at centers with foster kids, and hear their story, what the Foster Care system is like, and how they would want to change it. This would give me an idea on how I can make an impact not only on them, but also on the system. My overall goal towards this project is to learn more about these two topics and to hopefully create a positive change in some way to the Foster Care System. Now, you’re probably asking “Rohah, how are you out of all people are going to have a positive impact on the system?” I could ask myself the same thing, but everything comes with a challenge, and I am determined to beat this challenge by the end of the year.

This topic not only has just one thing that’s interesting. All of it is intriguing and interesting. In every dramatic movie, you always see a Social Worker ruining a families life by pulling the kids out of their homes. Why do you think they do that? See, now it’s all very interesting because a lot of people consider them as home wreckers; however, they’re doing the complete opposite. They’re saving these poor innocent kids lifes from abusive, addicts, etc type of parents. It’s crazy and so interesting to know that a complete stranger can just walk into your life and change it positively, while we're all thought that having a family is what makes life positive. It’s very interesting to know how one person can change the lives of multiple kids. It’s also interesting to see how the government was supposed to create a system to help kids, but it’s probably the messiest system because of how much the government doesn’t really care.  Who wouldn’t be fascinated by this?

Through this topic, most people will benefit from it. First, I will benefit a lot from it. That is because knowing that this is what I want to do and learn in college, I will be able to have proper background knowledge on what these two topics are about and like. I would be getting a lot of learning out of this. Second, the kids I will be interviewing and getting to know will benefit from it. I do believe that they probably aren’t living their best lives right now, but they will benefit from having me there to always talk to and spill there problems to. Lastly, I hope to benefit all Foster Care children. SInce I want to make an impact on the system, I’m hoping I will be able to change a lot of foster kids life from negativity to positivity.

In multiple ways, this is definitely academically worth it. I am very grateful to be able to live a life where I don’t have to be in the system or even go through all of this pain. However, I went through an experience I never thought I would. This year I decided to take a peer tutor class where I pretty much get to help teach special education. The kid I was teaching told me disturbing news going on at home. Being very shocked, I knew I had to do something about it. I reported it. This caused me to be in an office with two cops for two hours. I kept telling myself that I did the right thing, but I always had a piece of guilt that made me feel like I just ruined a family. Our schools Social Worker came to talk to me and told me, it’s okay to feel this way. It’s exactly how she feels through her job. She taught ways to cope and that what I did is not what a lot of people can do. I learned a lot from my topic that day. In just one day, I was able to learn so much. I can’t even imagine how much more I can learn in these last few months of school. To be completely honest, I am not an expert at Social Working or even this system; therefore, having a mentor that is a Social Worker, volunteer at all sorts of foster kid places, get a background understanding, I am going to be learning a lot more than that day about a career that I’m very interested and passionate about.

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Today I was able to talk and interview with a friend of mine who actually was in the system for quite a long time. It was definitely crazy to hear his story because he never really opened up about it to me, but when I told him about what I was doing, he insisted in telling his story. It was hard listening to some of it because I didn't know he had gone through that. I definitely choked up through some parts of it because I overall didn't know what to say to him. I am so glad he had opened up about his story because I felt like he had a sense of relief opening up about it. I hope a lot of people will listen and learn more about the foster system because not everything is perfect.

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I have booked a time and date to contact my friend to call him. I have booked it for April 16.  I am going to ask him about his story,  what it did to him, and how his life is now. I am very excited to hear his story. After getting this interview done, I believe I am done because I can't do anything else because of COVID-19.

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In the U.S., the government has established a system for children with no families; the Foster Care System. Crystal Lombardo from Vision Launch said, “Despite the fact that a lot of children stay in foster homes for just a short time, it is already a huge way to develop family bonding. Thus, they often develop relationships that can cherish for the rest of their lives.” Kids usually believe they won't have a family to love them; however, foster homes help kids realize that they will find that bonding that will create amazing memories. “What Are the Positives of Foster Care System,” morally states “Opportunity to help a child recover from trauma.” The system is trying to help kids create better memories so they can recover and forget about the trauma they had to experience before entering the system. The system isn’t purposely trying to rekindle these bad memories; they are trying to create more positive memories with a family that will actually care for them. The way kids act is not because of the foster system, but it is mostly because of the way their life was before they went into the system. Moreover, “What Are the Positives of Foster Care System” stated, “Opportunity to be a positive influence in a child’s life.” Children going into the system usually only know the negatives of their life with no hopes of happiness; therefore, the system helps children create a new route for their life. Although the Foster Care system is designed to do good, overall it negatively impacts a child’s mental, emotion, and physical health.

Kids that are put into the system have been known to have negative mental health going in and going out. Daley Beth once stated, “In addition to such policy compliance moves, children are also commonly removed from foster homes because the foster parents were found to be unprepared to meet their means.” Kids put into a home and taken out start to become suicidal or depressed because they get that mentality of never finding a home. Every kid has a different mentality throughout the process, but they usually have some common problems. Therefore, throughout the process, children's behavior starts to change. Carrie Craft wrote, “This is very confusing to foster children and makes them very difficult behavior to extinguish.” Through the process, children become to start learning to lie so they don’t have to go to some specific home or even just try to get out of the system because of how bad it has been for them.

With the mental health that kids start to distinguish, they also start to have depression as well. “The Impacts of Foster Care” once said, “They have poorer mental health, as determined by the fact that psychiatric referral and use we're higher for them than doe adoptees or persons in the general population.” Every single day that a kid is in the process of the system, there mentality becomes worse and worse causing them to have bad mental illnesses such as depression. When a kid suffers from depression, trying to form a relationship with the foster parents can be hard. According to the same article, “Problems may exist for the former foster children in forming stable cohabiting situations, in parenting, and in establishing integrated social relations in their community.” Every foster parent wants to have a relationship with the child, but before they get the child, the child has already gone through so much with the system that made him/her depressed; therefore, it makes it ten times harder to establish the positive relationship they want. Mental illnesses are not the only thing that forms in a child's mind, but even heavy insecurities start to show as well.

Being insecure has been shown to affect most kids that are a part of the Foster Care system. For example, “Some foster children may have violent outbursts or rage when angry” (Craft). When a kid is insecure they become more aggressive to take out their anger because they don’t know how else to take it out. When they become more into the system throughout their lives, they become to show low self-esteem because they just want to give up. According to “The impacts of Foster Care,” they stated “They had less self-esteem, less happiness, and less satisfaction with life as a whole…” The system makes kids so insecure that they become to detach themselves from finding a home and causes them to have so many problems with not only insecurities but even there entire mental health state.

Not only has mental health been a big issue with foster children, but so has the emotional health aspects too. According to Craft, “Your children may become attached to the different foster children that enter your home. It may be painful for them to say goodbye.” Through the process of finding homes, the children will get very attached to the family and sometimes that home isn’t the home that the system wants; therefore, when they get removed it's hard for both the biological kids of the foster parent and the foster kids to say goodbye to each other. Another example would be, “Although foster care is only temporary, separation can be a bit difficult once the bond has been established. The fact that almost half of those who have gone to foster homes have been returned eventually to their birth parents, it /can be a painful experience for them. This becomes a damaging event for them as they need to sever the bond that they so dearly built.” This causes kids to have a very painful experience with the transition, forcing them to emotionally detach themselves from the foster home that showed them how much they cared and loved for that soul.

With children going through this trouble, most of the time they feel like they don’t belong.  For example, “6 Problems with the Foster Care System” said, “Children’s needs often go unheard.” When a kid is trying to get there foster parents to listen but they won’t, it causes them to feel like the parents don’t care about their needs and that they don’t really want them. Moreover, “Foster Care” stated, “While most children in foster care live in family settings, a substantial minority--11 percent-- live in institutions or group homes.” Most minorities living in the system are put with multiple other kids, which can cause them to feel like one kid is favorited more than them. Lastly, that article also wrote, “While states should work rapidly to find safe permanent homes for kids, on any given day children available for adoption have spent an average of about one and a half years waiting to be adopted since their parental rights were terminated.” Some kids live in the system throughout their years of childhood, and when that happens they have a feeling that no family wants them because of multiple reasons; causing them to have the mindset that they will never belong anywhere. Kids not only go through the phase of not belonging, but also go through a lot of emotional abuse.

In addition, kids start to also suffer from emotional abuse throughout there time in the system. According to Teo, “Asking for a foster child’s backstory story is hurtful.” With kids whose past was very negative and traumatic, it makes them emotional when asked about there backstory because it reminds them of those days and how lonely they felt on those days. Once a kid has entered the foster home they are put in, usually the foster parents ask about their past but some parents don’t realize how much it hurts them to talk about it, making them feel the same exact way they felt when going through such hardship.  Teo also stated, “Foster children must leave everyone and everything behind.” Going into the system causes the child to even leave the people that still cared and loved behind which causes foster kids to start feeling emotionally abused when entering a new home without them. “How Foster Care Affects Children In Your Home,” said, “These same families may be surprised at the level of swearing some foster children use on a daily basis, this includes very young children.” Even at an early stage, kids start to go through emotional abuse from their foster parents and learn to cuss from the people who gave them the abuse. Moreover, when talking like the person who abused them, they feel protected from ever being emotionally abused again. Another example includes “Interacting with biological parents can be challenging.” Most biological parents are the cause of the start of emotional abuse, then the system keeps it going, making it harder for kids to rekindle with the parents that started it all. The system keeps it going because they randomly put kids in homes, and sometimes it’s easily noticeable to know when there isn’t a good connection with the foster child and foster parents. In the Foster Care System, kids go through mental abuse, emotional abuse, but the worst and hardest one is physical abuse.

Most kids in the system go through physical abuse which is significantly known to be the worst and hardest abuse a child could go through. “The impacts of Foster Care” states, “Several studies suggest that compared to the general population, former foster children have poorer physical health.” It’s crazy to think how big of a difference the physical health is towards a normal kid versus a kid in the system. The neglect some foster parents do to kids causes one of the worst cases of horrible physical health to be seen on child. As claimed by “The impacts of Foster Care,” says “Former foster children are likely to have higher numbers of teen pregnancies and greater social isolation than the general population.” The system causes kids to socially isolate themselves and makes them give up and not care about anything anymore; moreover, it leads to teen girls not caring who they have sex with, leading to a higher number of teens to become pregnant. On the authority of Craft, an example includes “Abuse and neglect have an impact on child’s behavior as well as on their mental state as studies are now confirming.” Physical abuse that most foster parents give to children is the cause of the beginning of the negative impacts on the child's behavior and mentality. With the physical abuse that is caused in foster homes, it also leads to those children to not eat.

Not eating can potentially lead to death; therefore, most cases of kids being starved by their parents are from the kids in the Foster Care System. As stated by Teo, some examples also include, “Many of these kids have lived without water or electricity.” Some foster parents don’t provide water to the kids, causing them to be dehydrated and become ill; leading kids to possibly become starving from food and water. Some cases even state that when a person from the government goes to see the house that the kids are living in, the refrigerator has a lock on it to make sure the kids don’t have access to it and eat unless the parents give them food. However, when the parent gives them food it’s usually not as good because they don’t really care about the child because the child isn’t ‘biologically’ theirs. Teo also states, “Food is a major issue in a way we could not have imagined.” The Foster System provides foster parents with up to $300-$1000 per month to help with feeding the kids and supporting them. Some parents will use that money for themselves and there own kids instead of the foster children themselves. The parents at the time won’t care about getting food for the kids, causing them to starve. Kids around the country in this system are being starved by their foster parents and 99% of the time, the system doesn’t put effort into getting the kids out of there and putting them an a healthy home instead.

One of the biggest reasons there is so much controversy going on around the system is the fact that they don’t show they care towards the children that are put into foster homes. “6 Problems with the Foster Care System,” declares “Teens age out of the system without proper support.” When kids finally turn eighteen, the system lets go and ‘forgets’ about them. They are left alone in the real world without any help or support. When these kids who are out of the system because they are eighteen without any help or support, they tend to go towards the drugs, prostitution, or even dealers just to be able to survive because they don’t know what else to do. Ward also explains that, “Sometimes the system fails foster children.” The reason why the system fails these kids is because they personally don’t put the time or effort to support/care for these foster children. The system just places the kids into these homes and hope for the best and never check up on them. “The Hidden Harms of the US Foster Care System,” preached that “Children are far less likely to be moved around when placed with foster families who are well prepared to meet their often challenging needs.” Not only are there good foster parents but there are bad ones as well that the system doesn’t notice. This causes children to keep moving around and become emotionally, mentally, and physically abused.

Even though the Foster Care System takes kids out of bad homes, they also don’t realize they’re doing worse to them then that bad home they were in. There was already 500,000 children put into foster care in the United States in the year of 2000. This amount has grown exponentially higher and higher every single year since 2000. “Health care systems, social services systems, and judicial systems are frequently overwhelmed by their responsibilities and caseloads” (“Development Issues for Young Children in Foster Care”). With so many kids in the system, workers in the system start to have a lot to do to find homes; however, they forget about the children that are already in bad homes who are being left in the dark for awhile. The system promises all of these benefits to going to a foster home; however, that is the complete opposite of what those kids get. The kids go through so much abuse in foster homes rather than the homes they were firstly taken out of. Kids in the system are four times more likely to commit suicide then kids who have never entered the system. The big issue with this government system is that they don’t realize how much negativity is occurring through it all. Even Beth Daley states, “Like other urgently needed repairs to the child welfare system, these measures require more funding to a system that typically takes a hit whenever state and federal budgets are squeezed. Changing this requires political will, the kind we only see, unfortunately, during a firestorm.” Whenever a natural disaster occurs or any sort of political issues, the government decides to take funding out of the foster system and into those issues. The government doesn’t realize how in need the system is for money, on top of that, they take the little money they have for other things. The system needs more funding from the government to give more support and care towards the foster children. To conclude, even though the Foster Care System is trying to help kids, they are impacting the kids mental, emotional, and physical health negatively.

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Overall, I am super proud of the work I have done for this project. I never really thought I could understand so much about this topic until today. Unfortunately, I am super upset at the fact that I wasn't able to get to the fundraiser portion of my project because of the pandemic going on. The fundraiser was what most of my artifacts were going to consist of. I always am bummed to not be able to do an in-person interview with the kids because I wanted to document there life and story; however, I am thankful that I was able to call one of the kids and get to interview them on call. I am proud of the work I did and am glad to say that I worked so incredibly hard for this project. This project has impacted me in such a positive way.

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This is the group home I visited and wanted to have a fundraiser for.  It was hard pulling up to this building because it was just old and rusty. The playground seemed sad and like no kid would want to play in it. Some windows had like a fence outside of them which hurt me because it seemed like these kids were prisoners.