Posts Tagged ‘foster care for fat kids’

By now you’ve heard about the proposal to send fat kids to foster care, charging their parents with being neglectful/abusive/whatever. Check out Ragen Chastain over at Dances with Fat for her interpretation because she does the science stuff so well! Of course, we hear the media’s interpretation of a study/proposal and they rarely get things right!

I can’t tell you how infuriating this whole subject is to me. Foster care. ugh. Feeding kids nutritiously. ugh. Part one is here.

I have direct experience with the foster care system in Illinois, so much of what I say will be from these experiences. All three of my boys were foster kids before coming to live in our home. I also worked with the Department of Children and Family Services when I worked with social services.

Throughout our country there is a shortage of suitable foster care homes for our children who are seriously in need of the protection of the system. Children who are truly abused and neglected (not just fat!) need the spaces that are available in these homes. Children whose parents are suddenly unable to care for them need these spaces. This is an overburdened system that doesn’t need an influx of children who don’t need these services.

Not all foster care homes are great places for children. Sometimes people get into the business of foster care because that’s what it is: a business. Being a foster parent means that you get a monthly check from the state for each child in your care. It’s not a fortune, but it can add up with multiple children. Sometimes foster children new to the system also get additional resources for things like clothing and school supplies.

Like I mentioned, my three boys were in foster care for years before coming to live with us. Each of them appeared on our doorstep with few belongings. These consisted of clothes that didn’t fit and toys for much younger children. I can only guess that their foster families didn’t feel it was necessary to send along the toys they talked about once having (even beloved teddy bears!) Please, let’s treat fat kids with loving families to this horror!

The state of Illinois has a great plan in place to ensure that foster kids have a feeling of belonging. Each foster family is encouraged to keep a scrap book for each child that will travel with them as they journey through the system. I never saw any of these scrapbooks. My kids have nothing to indicate that they existed before they came to our home. Baby pictures? Locks of hair from the first hair cut? Baby foot prints lovingly pressed into a baby book? Nope. A record of first words and first steps? Nope. Yes, fat kids with thrive in foster care!

While the original article (the actual material that was interpreted by the media) suggested that an intervention of services would help families, I’m not so sure that will work. One of my kids came to us so severely anemic that he could barely function. Everyone knew he needed medication. No one made the previous foster family give him the liquid iron he needed. Sure, fat kids will receive even better care in foster care or from a government agency than they will at home!

One problem of the foster care system is that many things are overseen by entry-level employees making near minimum wage. There is a high turn-over. I don’t know how many different case workers my family had, but every time there was a change, everything pretty much returned to the beginning. Once, no case worker came to check on one of my kids for 10 months. They are lucky we actually cared for him! Yup, this is the kind of steady intervention that a fat kid needs.

As a crisis worker, I encountered many families in need. There was never any money to help those who were just at the edge of crisis. No interventions until they hit bottom. I know many families would have been helped with just a little money, a little counseling, a little help. But there just weren’t enough resources to go around. Foster care is a crisis system. Every-day stressed parents cannot use them as a resource for assistance. This will help fat kids how?!

I think those in the media who think this would be a swell idea to combat the obesity epidemic attacking our society need to have their heads examined. Perhaps scientific studies should be fully interpreted by those with brains to determine if there is such an epidemic. Further, does being obese really cause all of the health risks that those vested in the diet industry claim?

Before we start ripping apart families because of a pseudo-crisis, we need to make sure that there really is such a crisis. Those in the policy-making game might want to take a look at how previous policies have affected all our children today.

 

By now you’ve heard about the proposal to send fat kids to foster care, charging their parents with being neglectful/abusive/whatever. Check out Ragen Chastain over at Dances with Fat for her interpretation because she does the science stuff so well! Of course, we hear the media’s interpretation of a study/proposal and they rarely get things right!

I can’t tell you how infuriating this whole subject is to me. Foster care. ugh. Feeding kids nutritiously. ugh.

Today I want to talk about how hard it is for the poor in our country to feed their kids nutritiously. Let’s use an imaginary single mother who is working and raising her kids alone. Yes, a single mother because they are the unsung heroes of our society. I don’t want comments about how terrible single parenthood is. We’re not here to make them feel bad.

Single Mom gets up, gets her kids ready for day care/school and delivers them where they need to be. I have kids. They aren’t easy to deal with when you have a set time to accomplish anything. They have that automatic slow down button whenever they need to hurry. Single Mom doesn’t have the luxury to stay home with her kids, because it is her job to make sure they have shelter, food, clothing, etc.

Single Mom drops the kids at their destinations and can rest easy because her kids will be well-fed while in the care of others. Oh, really? We live in the United States of America where we have designated ketchup a vegetable (thank you, President Reagan). We live in a country where funds for early-childhood programs have been dessimated in recent years, pretty much ensuring that an institutional-type child care situation (child care and schools alike) struggle with budget cuts and doing their best to work with what money they have.

(In my state of Illinois, even home daycare centers are feeling governmental intrusiveness when they will not have anything fattier than 2% milk reimbursed for healthy meals. Yippee! The state is telling me what kind of milk to feed my child! Does it even matter that “whole” milk has only 4% fat?!)

Yes, there might be a breakfast. But it’s some pre-cooked (practically pre-digested) drivel. French toast sticks. Frozen waffles. Frozen pancakes. Fresh fruit? Good God, why when it comes pre-softened in a can with most of the nutritional value stripped from it?! Let’s add some high fructose corn sugar maple flavored crap to the plate.

That’s just breakfast. Do the same for lunch. School lunches were the blog rage this past spring and I weighed in. Processed food rules! Corn dogs, hot dogs, tacos. Once again, few fresh fruits and vegetables show up here.

Plus many schools have had to cut down their physical activities. Physical education every day? Don’t count on it. After-school sports? Probably not.

All of these things above happened because politicians that we elected decided that funding our children is not necessary. Head Start has been cut. School budgets are cut. All the things that directly help our kids become healthy contributing members of society have been cut. Why? So our millionaires can get richer, corporations can operate cost-free, and politicians can spend their time putting women’s rights back to the 1950s instead of solving budget crises.

If our kids get fat (which is actually up for debate, actually) we’ll blame the parents. Even though families are seeing prices rising much faster than wages. Even though unemployment is rampant. Why should the government take any responsibility for this problem? Hell, they’ll just solve it be sending in another poorly-run government agency to solve the problem: the foster care system.

Check out part 2 tomorrow!