In cases of reported abuse and/or neglect in the home, children may be removed from their parents’ care by child welfare services and subsequently placed into foster care. 

Other reasons for children being placed into the foster care system include:

•  Abandonment
• Physical or emotional illness
•  Incarceration
•  Financial hardship
•  AIDS
•  Severe behavioral problems in the child
•  Alcohol/substance abuse
•  Death

Making decisions about the future for a child in foster care is called permanency planning.

Options for the child’s future include:

•     Returning to his/her birth parents
•     The termination of parental rights
•    Long-term care with foster parents or relatives

Children entering foster care have often suffered serious abuse or neglect, and can exhibit severe emotional, behavioral, developmental and/or physical health problems. 

 Children in foster care often struggle with many of the following issues:

•  Self blame for removal from birth parents
•   Wishing and fantasizing to return to birth parents, even after being abused by them
•   Feeling unwanted and unloved, especially if waiting a long time for adoption
•   Feeling helpless and out of control 
•   Aggression
•   Confusion 
•  Mixed emotions about foster parents
•   Feeling insecure and uncertain
•   Withdrawal
•   Impaired social relationships
•  School difficulties
•   Depression
•   Regression (thumb sucking, bed wetting)

Challenges for foster parents may include:

•   Recognizing the limits of your emotional attachment to the child
•   Understanding and sorting out mixed feelings about the child’s birth parents
•   Acknowledging emotional difficulties in letting the child return to birth parents
•   Dealing with complex emotional, and behavioral, physical, medical, etc., needs to the  children in your care
•   Finding patience to allow the child time to adjust to life in care
•   Maintaining structure and stability in your home
•   Working with the school, social workers, and the court system for the benefit of the child
•   Finding community services to support the child
•   Dealing with the child’s emotions and behaviors after visiting birth parents and family