Zitat des Tages über Pflegekinder / Foster Children:
Despite the best of efforts, many foster children are neither reunited with their families, nor adopted.
As an adoptive parent myself of foster children, I have seen firsthand the glaring problems of the system currently facing this Nation.
When I was growing up, my parents took in foster children. From a young age, I learned that there are a lot of children in need.
I have spent a lot of time with foster children over the years - kids for whom I have not necessarily acted as a foster parent.
Many foster children have had difficulty making the transition to independent living. Several are homeless, become single parents, commit crimes, or live in poverty. They are also frequent targets of crime.
I thought if anyone need a leg up, it was our foster children. So, I started getting involved in education reform, and that was back in 1998. And as a result of all the reform work that I had done, people urged me to run for the Minnesota state Senate. I did, I was there for six years.
My husband and I had five biological children but we also have been raising 23 foster children.
I'm not only a lawyer, I have a post doctorate degree in federal tax law from William and Mary. I work in serious scholarship and work in the United States federal tax court. My husband and I raised five kids. We've raised 23 foster children. We've applied ourselves to education reform. We started a charter school for at-risk kids.
State and local government, with financial support from the federal government, should offer a program to educate and train foster children for employment and provide them with financial assistance, as needed, until they reach age 21.
Though politics is by nature divisive, surely we all can agree that foster children need stability, safety, education, opportunity - and love.
Military brats have this toughness: they're almost like orphans or foster children; they develop little mechanisms. It sets you up to look at things a little differently.