The Effect Foster Care Has on Children's Mental Health

Abstract

By Jade Tingelhoff, Social Work

Advisor: Gary Dick Dick

Presentation ID: PM_A06

Abstract: When a child is removed from their homes, they are stripped from everything they are used to. They are faced with a major traumatic experience at such a young age. Also, the reason they needed to be removed from their homes was most likely caused by a reason such as abuse, neglect, or endangerment. That alone is a traumatic event for children. Add getting removed from your parents and your home and getting placed in a foster home, with people you do not know, in a house and neighborhood you are unfamiliar with. It is a seriously hard thing a child has to go through. Children getting taken away from their families and getting put into foster care can have a big impact on their mental health. It can cause mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression and conduct disorder. Going through trauma at such a young age not only affects mental health as a child, but even more so when that child becomes an adult, and last throughout their lives. There are thousands of children that are currently in the foster care system in the United States. Children go into foster care as infants through age seventeen. This study is going to look at the children currently in foster care, and assess their current mental health state, and if they have support and services for their mental health.