From Place To Place

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Last night Zach and I went to a training at Olive Crest in order to maintain our foster care license. The theme of the night was a documentary called From Place to Place followed by a discussion. The movie followed three children who had been placed in group homes as teenagers and what happened to them when they aged out of the system. The statistics were shocking. 40% of these youths will end up homeless. Over 70% of the girls will end up pregnant and over 70% of the boys will end up in prison. How can we as a society and especially as a church be ok with this? These children enter the system angry and troubled and are often "too difficult" for foster parents to handle. Instead of sticking with the children through the issues and loving them unconditionally - through the self-sabotage, through the anger, through the tough times - these children are passed from home to home and will eventually end up as a number in a group home. There they may be overmedicated and definitely under-loved. They aren't even given a chance.  Repeatedly the kids in the story said they just wanted someone to love them. We keep saying in church that we're "losing the youth". Maybe we need to go out and get them. At the very least I encourage you to visit these sites with an open heart.

To learn more and to find out ways that you can help, visit the following sites:

From Place to Place: Changing the System That Raised Them
http://fromplacetoplacemovie.com/

Olive Crest Foster and Adoption Agency
http://www.olivecrest.org/site/PageServer

Los Angeles Department of Child and Family Services
http://dcfs.co.la.ca.us/

Bridge of Faith: A Home for Women Facing Homelessness
http://www.bridgeoffaith.org/

Comments

  1. CarolSeptember 7, 2011 at 9:32 PM

    Did you read the article I sent you about a program at Colo State called Fostering Success? It was encouraging to see such a program assisting this invisible segment of the university student population. It said nationally, only 2% of former foster youths earn college degrees. Good article sweetie, thanks for raising our awareness!

    PS Sorry page 3 of the article I sent was backwards! I scanned it in and instead of flipping it vertically, flipped it backwards instead :}

    ReplyDelete

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