It is about making foster care successful

Essay by kingdawg22 May 2002

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Making Foster Care Successful

The early 1800s was an era where poor, orphaned, and abused children were left on streets, thrown in prison, or simply put away in orphanages. Finally, in 1851, a man by the name of Charles Brace finally decided to recognize this serious problem. At the time the popular Puritan belief was that "children are damned and saved through discipline" (Eviatar). But Charles Brace had the conception that children were "innocents in need of protection" (Eviatar). And Brace was the first to act upon his belief that all children deserve a family if possible by founding the Children's Aid Society, a starting block for the foster care system of today (Eviatar).

However, while Brace was undoubtedly revolutionary in his thinking about child welfare, his motives may not have been entirely unselfish. While he did want to help poor children, his objectives also included ridding the upper class of the dangerous and disturbing unparented children, referred to as the "poison society" (Eviatar), running around the streets.

Not to mention he figured taking a lead on such an issue would surely help his social standing (Eviatar).

Regardless of his motives, he did accomplish the feat of raising awareness about the issue of what to do with unwanted children. However, the first attempts at resolving the issue failed miserably. The Children's Aid Society implemented an orphan train program where the children were sent to the country to live with a family. The idea was that surely the children would be better off with strangers than living in slums without supervision. Unfortunately, after the children were sent to the country, no one thought to check up on them. Therefore, they were living among strangers in poorly screened and unsupervised homes with no one even knowing what happened to the vast...