Child Maltreatment In The Foster Care System: The Importance of Social Support For Foster Youth

Abstract

The lack of social support in the foster care system has played a significant role in the negative development of foster youth. Children often enter the foster care system emotionally and physically traumatized from past experiences in their original homes. They need services that will help them recover from these past experiences. Unfortunately, these children often do not receive help because their foster parents fail to take them to get the help. Additionally, foster children age out of the system at 21 years age, finding themselves with little if any, medical, financial, or social support. Recipients sometimes report that the lack of supervision from the social workers on a daily basis plays a huge part in this problem. This exploratory study seeks to answer the following question: How do people who have gone through foster care describe their experience and how are they coping with their experience? Using a qualitative content analysis of YouTube and TV movies, I examined the effect that the foster care system has had on the youth who directly experienced this system.