Children who grow up in out-of-home child placement go through a multitude of changes that have a lasting impact on the rest of their lives. This environmental change during their formative years affects the way they form attachments, prepare for adulthood, their academic performance, their ability to build trusting relationships, and more.
Effects of Out-of-Home Child Placement
It’s Hard to Trust and Build Relationships
Being taken from your home is a traumatic experience for many children. Leaving the place and people you’re familiar with to live with strangers can be hard, even for adults, and even more so for a child. It can be hard for them to trust a new caregiver who’s responsible for their well-being when the trust they had with their own parent or guardian is broken because, for whatever reason, they have to leave.
This lack of trust can manifest itself in different ways, such as crying, withdrawal, sadness, and depression. It can also make it hard for children to form healthy attachments to adults in their lives right now as well as when they grow up. Suppose a child has to move to multiple foster homes while growing up. In that case, they often lose their ability to form secure attachments and relationships with their foster family out of fear of being moved again. Later on in life, this can make it difficult for them to have healthy relationships with other people due to their fear of abandonment.
It’s Hard to Do Well in School
Additionally, moving between foster homes often results in changing schools multiple times. As a result, they don’t receive the steady educational support they need to make good grades or feel like higher education is an option for them. Many adults who grew up in out-of-home child placement later report being unsatisfied with their education and feeling unprepared to support themselves after aging out of the foster care system.
It’s Hard to Be a Successful Adult
Poor education and a lack of support system set many teenagers up for failure as adults when they age out of the system at 18. Often, they’re not taught job or basic communication skills to help them gain employment, know how to pay bills, and support themselves. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “up to 50 percent of former foster or probation youth end up homeless within the first year and a half of their emancipation.”
Alabama Free Will Baptist Children’s Home Is Making a Difference
When a child comes into our care, they come into a stable environment where they can learn what to expect every day and thrive and just be a kid. They go to public school, attend church on Sundays, participate in extracurricular events, and go on vacation with their house parents. If a child graduates from high school and is still in the Home, they have the option to participate in our Bridge Program. The Bridge Program holds three apartments where former residents can live after they graduate if they would like to have the support of the Home but also begin having independence. As a part of the Bridge Program, residents are required to have a job.
Visit our FAQ page to see how you can help us make a difference and combat the effects of out-of-home child placement.