During the last few months, on average, we have had around 400 children in state care, half of whom are in foster care while the other half live in residential homes. And as the head of the Foundation for Social Welfare Services frequently makes known, the demand for carers and the need for placements continue to rise. Thus,  the respective authorities frequently appeal for people to open up their homes as an act of love and duty to the country.

Yet, is our current foster care system robust and effective enough to overcome the many challenges that children in foster care face? Youth who are transitioning to adulthood need to have well-developed self-esteem and self-efficacy skills that equip them to manage relationships in multiple contexts, including education and employment settings, as well as with friends and family members. Often, youth in the foster care system have lived through multiple traumas and disruptive events by the time they begin their transition to adulthood.

This can include abuse and neglect, multiple foster home placements, a lack of continuity in education, and an array of losses in relationships with friends, family, and siblings. Their life experiences can create additional problems, resulting in mental illness, substance abuse problems, and a lack of confidence. These challenges impact the emotional and social development of foster care youth as they transition into adulthood.

Perhaps that was one of the main reasons why, in 2020, legal changes were made, meaning that foster carers can now apply to adopt their foster children after five years and, in exceptional cases, after three years. Previously, carers needed to have been fostering for 10 years before applying for adoption. Some children in foster families are eventually reunited with their birth families when it becomes safe enough for them to return, but others are permanently adopted by their foster parents. However, it is during those five or three years of foster care that major challenges for the foster care system crop up and need effective addressing. It is a period where the role of social workers can make or break the ultimate scope of the whole system.

We have long known that people with qualifications in the humanities who have not graduated in social work are doing social work and erroneously being called social welfare professionals. Among other roles, they work in sensitive areas such as child protection and looking after children. They are given roles and tasks for which they were never trained or prepared. It is a system that allows and promotes such recruitment, which is against the law and indirectly harms the foster care system.

There is a lot wrong with a system that so desperately needs to get it right. But getting to the root of frustration with child welfare systems is not easy. There are a lot of complicated and intertwining factors that risk making foster care ultimately unsuccessful for those who wish to enter the system. There is one major obstacle when it comes to getting children out of group care. There are rarely enough foster families to achieve that goal, and so the appeal for more foster families goes on. The consequence is that there is often a dependency on group homes for teenagers, in particular, because not enough people want to step up for them.

Together, the underqualified and inexperienced social workers, the growing number of children in state care, and the lack of enough foster families compound the social problem. A number of factors contribute to risk. Children in foster care are more likely to have been exposed to substances in utero, have a higher rate of family psychiatric problems, are more likely to experience substance use in their parents and carers, are less likely to have had consistent prevention and primary care services, and, by definition, have experienced one or more instances of maltreatment. The presence of health and mental health challenges can also increase the risk of disrupted foster care placements and poor continuity in health and mental health care, thus compounding the loss and trauma.

These traumatised children live in temporary housing provided by the state, are cared for by relatives or unrelated foster parents, or are placed in other residential facilities like group homes. And they are constantly frustrated with a system that feels unmanageable. When children, especially teens, are placed in group homes, they are denied the ability to connect with a permanent, adoptive family. Without those connections, they are likely to age out of the system without a supportive network in place. Some will be involved in the justice system shortly after leaving foster care. Others will drop out of school.

Perhaps we must seriously start considering extending foster care beyond age 18 to age 21 because we need to understand that young adults are in need of much more support from carers and case workers. We have to advocate for stronger transitional measures for young adults ageing out. Young adults need that kind of mentorship and support too.

Guardians need more support, too, which is essential for foster parents to work through any difficulties they may experience. Our entire community needs to have a positive attitude towards people who do the difficult work of becoming foster parents. They are often taking kids who have experienced trauma in their early years and need to be trained about what is going on in a child's life and how to best address those concerns.

We often talk about adoption or ageing out as the only two options after foster care, but reunification with a parent is an option often overlooked. The system as a whole often ignores reunification as a viable option when thinking about a young person's future. That is a major misstep, especially because children who are removed from their families do not necessarily want to be. Talking about foster care with reunification in mind is essential, and we must value the youth’s voice more.

At the end of the day, we must remember that anyone who does anything to help a child in their life is a hero.