Native Children and Foster Care Money

[ANNA NICOLE]

I see all of your points througout this thread - but what about those native kids who are much better off in foster care? I am a foster parent - and i am a adoptive parent. and i've met other foster families within my agency that i work with - and i live in a urban area - and some of these children are by far better off in foster care then being in the same situation they were in with their parents. What do you do about the children who have been so abused by their bio family so much that they have day time hallucinations at age 8 - or hoard food because they are worried they wont have food next time? or the child who witnessed his parents murdering someone and then just leaving him at a gas station? Everyone wants to say - send the child back to the family - but sometimes that is NOT the best thing. Sometimes staying in a foster situation is better than living with murdering parents or with extremly abusive parents. ICWA is involved and often times the tribe is also extremely invovled. It all depends on if the tribe understand the law to its fullest extent and understands what they are able to do on their own. In my adoption i have 5 different workers - why - because i have native kids that require a tribal work - a social worker - and a foster worker - and all the back up workers. so Sometimes foster care in the right context is a good alternative to living in deplorable situations. Now i'm not referring to being poor - or ill educated or housing over crowded - but some times there are real social ills that the PARENTS will need to handle and they only way to handle is to remove the child. Would you leave a child in a home with no food? would you leave a child in a home where they were being abused? would you leave child in a home where they saw the parents killing someone?

The whole - great white hope - whil still relevent for some things i suppose - it is the PARENTS that have to retain their parent rights and do the BASIC care for their children. Basics are - a safe home - clothing- food- and acccess to education. Is this too hard for parentes? I say for some yes -- they care more about their partying or their getting high - but what happens to the child? what then? So all this its the white man getting in the way is - so old. Parents no matter what race or what year will need to take care of their own childrend and if they cant or unable to - then apparently social services needs to step in.

Don't you mean real, accountable, adult, honest, etc?

The question was asked "how to stop the problem."

Step One, is to realize who is at fault.

If you have accountable parents, none of this happens.

Don't try to excuse "poor" as a "lifestyle," unless you're willing to go over in the college thread and say "our kids don't need no stinking college."

You can't have it both ways.

Grow up or give up.

Ah yes, here we set off again immediately with the blame game. The system is perfect, and there are not people sitting in prison for crimes they never committed children are not taken from good families and children are not given to bad families, none of the children die in the custody of the states nor are they mistreated in a good portion of foster care homes. Yes Zeke, all one needs is the Western White dominate education that you so cling to as you make the same statements as the aforementioned white dominant society, "Well, if those Indians would take care of their children, we wouldn't have to."

My original statement stand,
"That's pretty white of ya!"

[Zeke]

Alrighty then.
How would you decide who would fit the criteria for forced sterilization and who would decide what that criteria is?

If you're crappy enough as a parent to have your kids removed, you shouldn't have any more.

[subeeds]

Alrighty then.
How would you decide who would fit the criteria for forced sterilization and who would decide what that criteria is?

[Zeke]

So, Zeke, how would you go about solving this issue?

I'm not opposed to forced sterilization.

[AmigoKumeyaay]

Did anyone watch Dr. Dean tonight on Headline News? They featured the video-taped home beating of 16 year-old mentally handicapped girl by her parents in TX.

The father is actually a courtroom judge in TX, and was brutally beating the girl with a thick leather belt.

Dr. Dean, who is an accomplished therapist stated that such violent trauma during youth will bring on patterns of addiction and behavior problems.

[kgirl7]

If there aren't enough foster families, then perhaps a different system could be put in place. Perhaps a tribally run group home?

[subeeds]

So, Zeke, how would you go about solving this issue?

[Zeke]

WOW, that was pretty white of ya.

Don't you mean real, accountable, adult, honest, etc?

The question was asked "how to stop the problem."

Step One, is to realize who is at fault.

If you have accountable parents, none of this happens.

Don't try to excuse "poor" as a "lifestyle," unless you're willing to go over in the college thread and say "our kids don't need no stinking college."

You can't have it both ways.

Grow up or give up.

Try having responsible Native parents that don't deserve to have their kids removed?

WOW, that was pretty white of ya.
As opposed to white, black, brown, red folks, who don't deserve to have there kids? See that crap on the news all the time. Yet Child Protective services never remove or at least give back, one way or another the kid dies.

And either you didn't read the info or have never known or seen a kid removed from a home because they were poor. Native kids are not always removed because of addiction, if that were the case, then the numbers would stagger as to the amount of white kids in the system, nor because of abuse or neglect. But because we're poor Indians, who "Choose to live in our "lifestyle.

Very touchy subject because I have friends and cousins who have been removed. Not saying that my family doesn't have there problems, but definitely not enough to remove children.

[comadre]

The social services here on the rez here is always advertising for native foster families. There's just not enough of them. I know a lot of people that are taking care of other kids informally.

It's an ugly situation all around. There are some kids that should be taken out of their homes, that aren't.

So why are there not enough native foster care homes? Do you think it might be because native communities are smaller and the dynamics are such that it would be hard to take in a foster child without some anonymity? Or are there other issues?

I think we need to figure that out and start there right? Here's my first good guess.Increase the current numbers of native foster care,become more assertive in dealing with the social service system and then at the same time we need to tackle the issue of abuse and neglect within the native communities?

[kgirl7]

Something fishy is definitely going on with this.

[comadre]

http://www.myazbar.org/AZAttorney/Archives/Feb00/indianchild.pdf

[subeeds]

If it could be gotten into the school curriculum in grades K-12, it could help. There needs to be more than that though and where does that come from? Kids need to see people being responsible and examples of responsibility. If it doesn't come from home, then where?

[Zeke]

That sounds good. You invent the time machine that will go back a couple of generations so there is a place to start to maybe save this generation or the next one. I will volunteer to be the first one to try it out.

See?

That's the problem when you've been brainwashed into entitlement crafted by generational trauma.

Place to start?

TRY NOW.

It is the responsibility of this generation to "save" this generation, ongoing and recurring.

We do not carry the sins or stigma of our forefathers unless we accept it.

I don't, why should anyone?