Can we just go ahead and admit that the foster program is not superior to the orphanages that it replaced?
Sure. To be clear though, the state doesn't really take children away for no reason. I'm sure there are isolated incidences, but in general, the kids who end up in the foster care, did not land there because they came from loving stable environments.
If there's any research that shows I'm wrong, and that taking troubled kids away from their families is actually the best thing for their development, I'm eager to hear about it.
And then the second preferred outcome is finding a caregiver in the extended family.
A distant third is a foster care placement.
From my experience, they try to place children with immediate family if at all possible. But I’ve also seen children come from appalling circumstances - with mothers who literally sell or give them to convicted pedophiles, or who witnessed their father attempt to murder their mother in full view of their children. I’m far from thinking the foster care system is perfect, but I’ve seen more than enough to doubt the idea most children should stay with in their homes. I’ve never seen a social worker treat the decision to remove a child from a home flippantly.
My partner and I are planning to become foster parents, so I've spent the last two years or so reading a lot about fostering, and we also took a course to prepare us.
My impression is that many cases aren't quite as clear, and it's often hard to say if removing the kids was really the best course of action. I don't think social workers are careless, but they do have to make decisions based on limited information, and they often don't have sufficient alternatives to taking kids away.
But of course, I'm just a random dude commenting on the internet, and maybe I'm wrong. I also live in Austria, so maybe the situation is totally different to the US (the system does work differently). I've also tried to find statistics about foster kids, and it's surprisingly hard to find them.
No, I've just read a little on the subject.
Obviously comparisons are hard since we dismantled the orphanages in the 50s/early 60s but the best comparisons show orphanages performing favorably. I think people got caught up too much shows and plays about this stuff.