Report: Teens Leaving Foster Care More Likely to See Jail than Graduation

Teenagers leaving the foster care system in Colorado are more likely to go to jail than get a high school diploma. A Rocky Mountain PBS I-News analysis of data provided by the Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) revealed that only 28.7 percent of foster youth will graduate from high school on time, but at least 38 percent will have been incarcerated between ages 16 and 19. The national data show that 43 percent of women and 74 percent of men who emancipated from foster care will have been incarcerated at least once in their lives. By age 19, foster youth who were never placed in a permanent home are more likely to have a criminal record than a high school diploma.

Success with Troubled Youth Using No Drugs or Mental Health Therapy – A Threat to the Medical Kidnapping System

In 2015, Health Impact News published an article from Nehemiah Flynt, a former foster parent who left the foster care system after seeing how corrupt it was. Nehemiah exposed how CPS often takes children away from loving parents. He noticed that almost all of the foster children were drugged. Nehemiah left the foster care system, and became part of a ministry that worked with troubled youth without using drugs or mental health services. It was a highly successful program, but soon CPS came knocking on his door, and effectively shut down the program, since it was not using "approved" drugs and mental health services. Is this the state of "Child Protection Services" in the United States today? Have we as a society allowed the government and their social services programs to redefine "abuse" and "health"? Is "abuse" and "mental health" now defined as the absence of psychiatric drugs? Who are the true abusers of today's troubled youth? I asked Nehemiah Flynt to describe the former program he worked in that was so successful, that it became a threat to CPS and the psychiatric drug industry.

Former Foster Parent Exposes How CPS Kidnaps Kids Away from Good Homes – Puts them on Drugs

I became a foster parent with the intentions of putting a roof over the heads of orphaned children. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. By the time I completed the training process, I understood that the majority of the children that would be entering my home were not orphans. I was brainwashed into believing the children had come from abusive and neglectful homes. I was told the state had rescued them from horrible living environments and that I was somewhat of a hero for taking them in. They were all lies. It took several years for me to truly see what I had become a part of.

Feds Pay for Drug Fraud: 92 Percent of Foster Care Kids Prescribed Antipsychotics for Unaccepted Uses

The release in late March of an alarming new report by federal investigators has confirmed in shocking new detail what has been known for years: Poor and foster care kids covered by Medicaid are being prescribed too many dangerous antipsychotic drugs at young ages for far too long -- mostly without any medical justification at all. Medicaid spends about $3.5 billion a year on antipsychotics for all ages, largely for unaccepted uses, with nearly 2 million kids prescribed them. Nationally, about 12 percent of all the nation's 500,000 foster care children have received Medicaid-paid antipsychotics at some point, often because they haven't been offered proven, "trauma-informed" intensive therapies, according to Kamala Allen, director of Child Health Quality for the Center for Health Care Strategies.

Foster Care Children are Worse Off than Children in Troubled Homes – The Child Trafficking Business

Children whose families are investigated for abuse or neglect are likely to do better in life if they stay with their families than if they go into foster care. Studies show that children from troubled homes who stayed with their families were less likely to become juvenile delinquents or teen mothers and more likely to hold jobs as young adults. Children placed in foster care have arrest, conviction, and imprisonment rates as adults that are three times higher than those of children who remained in troubled homes. These facts are not even in dispute. So why does the current foster care system still exist, when it is clearly destroying the lives of so many children?

Is Foster Care “In the Best Interest of the Child”?

Current laws in the United States that give legal authority to social workers and law enforcement to remove children from their families and place them into foster care often use the term "in the best interest of children." This sounds like a noble reason to take children away from their families, but what do measured outcomes of such actions really instruct us about the definition of "the best interest of children"? Are children truly better off in foster care than they would be if they had stayed with their natural parents who are accused of some "abuse" or "neglect"? Let's take a look at some statistics to find the answer to that question.

Report Exposes Why Corrupt CPS Agencies Seldom Place Foster Children with Family Members

Fox 8 points out in their investigation that North Carolina rejects funding that would put children permanently with relatives instead of in foster homes. Grandparents who are able and willing to care for their grandchildren, for example, are routinely rejected by the State. Why? Melissa Painter of Fox 8 points out that in North Carolina more than 10,000 children are in foster care under the care of the State. This brings in more than $198 million of funding to take care of these children. Federal laws actually require States to give preference to placing children with relatives. There is even federal funding available to place the children with relatives in "permanent legal guardianships." But North Carolina (and many other states) do not follow this practice, because children put up for adoption bring in more federal funding. Instead of giving federal funds that can be designated for relatives in guardianships, they keep the funds for themselves to administer the foster care and adoption system. In short, a child put into the foster care system on the path to adoption, brings in more money to the State, and employs more people to "administer" these children.

Court Approves $2.075 Million Settlement for Ex-foster Children Who Were Abused

The federal court in Nevada has approved a $2.075 million settlement for seven former foster children who claimed they were injured while in Clark County’s child welfare system, the National Center for Youth Law announced. “The track record for the county is not good,” said Bill Grimm, a senior attorney at the Oakland, Calif.,-based National Center for Youth Law, which filed the lawsuit and lobbies for the protection and care of foster children. The suit cited concerns with numerous aspects of the county’s child welfare system, including the use of psychotropic medications on children, reported physical and sexual abuse in foster homes, and the adequacy of Child Protective Services investigations.

Billion Dollar Children for Profit Industry: Foster Care Deaths and Sexual Abuses

A recent BuzzFeed News investigation into the nation’s largest for-profit foster care company revealed deaths, sex abuse, and serious lapses in the training and oversight of foster parents. The investigation into National Mentor Holdings found instances of long-term sex abuse in Maryland by Mentor foster fathers, widespread problems with Mentor documented by the state of Texas, and at least six deaths of children in the custody of Mentor since 2005. Mentor trades on the New York Stock Exchange as Civitas Solutions Inc., which reported $1.2 billion in revenue last year.

12,000 Children from Foster Care Sue State of Texas over Abuses

Crystal Bentley, 23, entered the Texas foster care system when she was 2 and wouldn’t leave it until she aged out at 18. In the intervening years, as she was shuffled from place to place, she was repeatedly beaten and sexually abused — sometimes by the adults entrusted with her care, sometimes by their biological children, sometimes by other foster kids or her own relatives, Bentley testified in federal court Wednesday. A rotating cast of Child Protective Services caseworkers who were supposed to watch out for her safety often didn’t show up for monthly visits, she said. When they did visit, it was usually for a cursory handful of minutes during which they failed to detect what was happening to her. “I would hint that something was going on, but when they asked me if I was being sexually abused, it was always right there in front of my abusers,” Bentley testified. “What could I say?” Bentley’s testimony Wednesday came on the third day of a trial in a class-action lawsuit brought by Children’s Rights, a New York-based advocacy group on behalf of 12,000 children in long-term state care in Texas.