Saturday, August 16, 2008

Take my survey?

FosterMommy and I were recently asked by some friends to talk to other friends of theirs who were going through a similar foster care hell to what we experienced with Niblet. We did, and we hit it off great and we wish them tons of healing and strength as they go through the worst of losing their little boy. I also talked a bit with the mom about foster care reform and activism.

Foster care is such a broken system. My personal strong opinion is that it should be abolished completely, 100%, and all the money and resources that go toward CPS type services should instead go toward poverty-alleviation measures. I'm 1000% sure that it would keep kids safer, and it would obviously keep families together, and help adults and communities as well.

Anyway, that's not about to happen. But, I'm not going to spend all my energy pushing for foster care reform. Still, I'd like to do something.

As a foster parent, I wished for a national organization for foster parents. Mutual support, referrals for local lawyers, a blog roll, ASFA information, whatever. I'd like to try to create this, starting with a piece aimed at foster care system improvements. Since foster care is regulated at federal, state and local levels, and done differently in every area, it's complicated. But I made this simple short survey focusing on foster care reform and I'd like to use it to get an idea if what I think are the general big problems are the same things others see, and if not then what are.

If you're a foster parent who thinks the system needs to change, would you take it? And send your own blog readers over here to take it, too?

Click Here to take survey

Thanks all!!

Sorry for the crappy sentence structure here - I'm tired.