To be perfectly honest with you I could write a book not a article for both sides of the foster home debate. I think that the thing that stood out most for me reading this material was the fact that they stated in all reality perfect data would be physician based data based on before going into foster versus after would be the best data but because children from disadvantaged often poverty stricken environments aren't taken to the doctor like children who are in foster care, therefore data showing that children in foster care have more problems is naturally going to be more prevalent. The questions then become does this do more harm? Yes it does because foster families can't deal with the diagnosed problems that came with the children and are then passed from foster home to foster home. Does this disrupt the development of the child to adjust normally as a adult? Yes it does. Though that doesn't mean it's primarily the fault of the foster care system, meaning the problems were already in full play when the child entered foster care therefore if they had not gone into foster care the problem would still exist. One of my favorite ways to describe myself is that I am a highly functional dysfunctional and that is basically because we normalize our dysfunctional behavior, such an example of this would be being drawn to alcoholics like a magnet. It's because I spent my whole life around alcoholic's so their behavior and environment seems normal to me so I have to be really careful around men for this reason. If I had not sought out several years of counseling as an adult I would not see this therefore my environment would be a whole lot worse. In most situations children are often returned to their families but the underlying problems still exist throughout the family, once children are no longer supervised by workers those families tend to slowly slip back into their old patterns of behavior and children are more prone to be acceptable to the behaviors because they don't want to go back into the system, a system that also at that point really don't want them because they are older now, not adoptable and the system is full of large institutions and groups homes with them. The added destructive bonus to it all is that now these children not only have to continue living in a dysfunctional environment some now have developed a detachment disorder. This will easily convey to them that family isn't a important structure to maintain, that when the going gets roughs it's perfectly acceptable to just walk away.
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Sorry you had to go through a rough childhood.
I appreciate your feelings. Thank you. The path I walked didn't end in childhood unfortunately, there was six of us, two of us came out of it somewhat self adjusted enough to face life, the others I could write a book about, it was horrendous for them and how their life folded out and the rippling effect that unfolded upon my family for decades even for the next two generations to come. Our system here isn't a perfect system, there are many countries with imperfect systems and some with no system at all, no matter where one goes those who suffer the most will always be the most vulnerable, the children.