Corrections Ministries / Deacon John Cord

A call to help children who live in foster care in our Indiana communities

I recently heard a technology, entertainment and design (TED) talk about the foster care system in the United States. The speaker, Sixto Cancel, is a product of the foster care system. He explained that he bounced from foster care family to family from an early age until he “aged out” of foster care when he turned 18.

Luckily, he was able to complete a college degree and is now an advocate for improving the foster care system. He now runs an organization that advocates for relatives of the children to become their foster parents. He explains that living with relatives dramatically improves the outcomes for children, compared to those who are placed in foster care families who are not relatives.

Cancel explained that people who come from the foster care system are two to three times more likely to end up in prison. They are also two to three times more likely to end up homeless and in poverty. Foster care children are two times more likely to have severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) compared to people coming out of the military, which we typically think of as having the highest rates of PTSD.

This led me to look into what the foster care system in Indiana looks like. I learned that most children end up in foster care due to neglect or abuse by their parents or someone in their family. There are about 15,000 children in the foster care system in Indiana. Of these, about 42% are able to be placed with a relative or close friend of the family. Another 49% are living with a foster care family who are not a relative. About 6% are living in a foster home.

Indiana does an exceptionally good job of placing children with relatives and friends. We are among the highest in the nation in placements with relatives.

However, Indiana is not doing so well in another category. Indiana is among the top five states for per capita foster care placement. Ten out of every 1,000 children end up in foster care in Indiana at some point in their lives. The national average is six out of 1,000 children. I am not entirely sure why we are worse off than the national average.

What we do know about children in the foster care system in Indiana is they are much less likely to graduate high school, have a much higher rate of mental illnesses, end up in poverty at a much higher rate, and have a record of incarceration at an earlier age and frequency. Children who were in the foster care system also have much higher unemployment and homelessness rates.

What can be done to change or help this issue? We do know that a great majority of foster care children come from families mired in poverty. We know that poverty is a vicious cycle. So, it would seem that focusing our attention on helping those in poverty through education, mentoring and supporting love would be a good start.

There is a great book called Bridges Out of Poverty. It is written by Dr. Ruby Kayne, Phillip Duvol and Teri Dreussi-Smith, and I highly recommend reading it. It will help you increase your understanding of what poverty is and why so many people seem to be stuck in it.
 

(Deacon John Cord is the coordinator of Corrections Ministry for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. For more information on supporting the office’s re-entry ministry, contact Deacon Cord at 317-432-6604 or e-mail jcord@archindy.org.) †