Whenever children are placed in foster care, it is anyone's guess whether that home will prove safe. Sure, potential foster parents are both rigorously screened and trained. However, that is rarely enough to the extent that it is always impossible to know what a person's motives are for becoming a foster parent. As New Yorkers learned to our horror recently, that motive can be far worse than any threat their biological parents posed. In a New York Times article, which can be found here, we learned of a virtual house of horrors where repeated children were sexually abused by their foster parent.
In fairness, the vast majority of foster parents are extraordinary people who volunteer to be foster parents for purely altruistic reasons. . .they want to help, give back to their communities, etc. But then there are those who want something very different. The well being of the children placed in their care is, at best, an after thought.
Of course, since we can never screen motives, it falls to the foster care agencies to take seriously any concerns raised by anyone regarding the care the children are receiving. And for the most part, they do. But how to explain an epic lapse such as the one mentioned in the above article where so many boys were abused in the same home over a course of years? Whatever the explanation, it will serve as absolutely no consolation to the children or their distraught and/or furious biological parents.
We need to do better. When the State intervenes in a family's life, it is of critical importance that, at the very least, the biological parents can feel that their children will be safe. Better training of case workers, more frequent home visits, more frequent one on one meetings with the children, more diligence and training for attorneys for children are just a few of the ways we can avoid this type of nightmare again.
