May is National Foster Care Month, and it's an opportunity to take a look inside the system we have set up to take care of kids in Arkansas.
I'm sure it's no surprise to readers to learn that our foster-care system is stretched to its absolute limits. Understanding this crisis requires that we understand two commonly misunderstood aspects of foster care: childhood trauma and preventative policies. We must recognize that addressing these issues is an essential co-ingredient to supporting more foster families and concrete service needs.
In the earliest years of life, it's our caregivers who provide the blueprint for how one interacts with the world. A caregiver who is responsive, attentive and safe paves the way for you to see the world as a safe place to explore. By contrast, a caregiver who could not meet these needs early in life can give one a sense that the world is unsafe and other people cannot be trusted.
Because there is no such thing as a perfect caregiver, we all fall somewhere in the middle of these two examples. Regardless of your experience, the blueprint from your caregivers becomes your hard-wired way of approaching the world and interacting with others.
For many foster youths, early childhood trauma and neglect are a reality. This is usually true in their home life to such an extent that child-welfare intervention was deemed necessary for their safety, placing them in the foster-care system in the first place. But often, the foster-care system only compounds the trauma kids have already endured. Over time, this results in a person living in "survival mode," finding it difficult to connect with others due to an overactive response to perceived danger; remember, the blueprint says "the world is not safe" and "no one can be trusted."
Foster homes should be an opportunity for kids to experience safe, dependable adults who can provide a new blueprint for how the world works. I often hear folks say they can't become foster parents because they would "get too attached." From the perspective of healing from trauma, that attachment can be good, actually. Attachment to just one safe, caring adult can pave the way for healthy relationships and better decision-making in a child's future. One safe adult is an important protective factor for kids who have experienced trauma.
With nearly 5,000 kids in Arkansas' foster-care system and only about 1,600 foster homes, it makes sense that the persistent goal is to recruit and train more foster parents to meet the immediate need. However, to see an improvement over time, we must also implement policies to reduce the number of kids coming into foster care in the first place. We need a preventative approach to foster care.
Neglect accounts for more than half of the allegations that lead to children being taken into foster care. When risk factors like poverty are identified, and targeted preventative services are offered, more kids can remain safely with their families. A preventative approach to foster care prioritizes assisting families in overcoming the challenge of poverty before state intervention is necessary.
Other risk factors associated with childhood neglect include substance abuse, food insecurity, incarceration, untreated mental health issues, high levels of parenting stress, and lack of education. These issues all intersect with one another to create stress on families from multiple sides, compounding the risk of foster-care placement.
Resources are currently focused on meeting the immediate needs of our growing foster-care crisis, as they should be. A child in need of placement today can't wait for us to implement preventative policies. They deserve safety now.
But this May I'd like to emphasize that while we address the immediate needs of the kids coming into foster care, it is also possible to implement policies that create protective factors in communities and reduce the need for foster care over time.
No matter your proximity to the foster-care system, the more you understand the effect of childhood trauma, the more empathetic and compassionate your worldview will be. The 200 youths who "age out" of foster care each year in Arkansas deserve that understanding from us, their neighbors. As for younger kids who are at risk for being brought into the system, we can still prevent their trauma. We can enact policies that provide protective factors in our communities and prevent the need.
These are the approaches I want to keep in mind this May as we create a bright future for all Arkansas children.
Allison Grigsby Sweatman is a mother, wife, social worker and child advocate who resides in North Little Rock, and is running to represent state Senate District 13.