The Child Welfare System in the USA. A Broken System? (PDF)

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Politics - Region: USA, , language: English, abstract: Without our parents most of us would not be where we are today. They raised us, taught us important lessons, still have our backs, and support us no matter what. Unfortunately, too often, we take them for granted. Only in difficult times or even when death takes them we recognize how lucky we are and have been for having them.

Not all of us are so lucky. More people than we can imagine either do not have parents or their parents do not take care of them. These people and children grow up without parental love and support. They do not know what it means to have parents who have their backs anytime. Instead, they are taken care of by public or private child welfare services which are institutions that are established under the child welfare system.

The reason for my interest in this topic has been the U.S. American TV-series The Fosters by Peter Paige and Bradley Bredeweg released in June 2013. This family drama series addresses among other topics the one of children having no parents who can take care of them or having parents who cannot take care of them due to issues like substance abuse or incarceration. Two of the main characters are sent from one foster family to the next before they are sent to a gay couple who already have adopted two other children in addition to one of the women having a child of her own from a past marriage. After some trouble the couple adopts both of the two foster children.

In this series, the U.S. American child welfare system plays an important role. It addresses the trouble some foster children go through such as ending up in juvenile prison, experiencing abuse in foster families, and having emotional and behavioral problems. It is the first series I have seen and heard about at all which deals with this topic and I wondered how realistic the series displays the child welfare system and its practices. If it was realistic much more attention would have to be paid to this system and much more would have to be done to protect the children. Therefore, I decided to take a closer look on this topic and to find out if the system is as broken as it is shown in The Fosters.