At such a young age, foster children are facing a lot of challenges.
Being removed from the environment they are familiar with combined with living with strangers and contemplating whether they will be reunited with their families again are just a few of the tremendous emotional and cerebral burdens foster children in New Jersey face on a daily basis.
Here are the consequences of these burdens:
Low academic performance
Kids who grow up in foster care are not privileged to get the education they need to compete with their non-foster peers. There are many reasons for this, such as having to transfer to a new school, live in a seemingly ‘foreign’ city as well as adjusting to a new environment. This is well recorded in the statistical performance of foster children in New Jersey.
For example, children in foster care have a higher tendency of repeating a grade or two. Plus, 37% of them drop out of high school.
By providing them with a stable home and allowing them to be a part of the family, adjustment period could be a bit easier.
Emotional problems
Having to deal with numerous issues at such a young age, approximately 80% of foster children suffer from serious emotional problems like depression. Additionally, almost half of the children in foster care aged 5 years old and below have developmental delays.
Trust issues
Since most foster kids were victims of abuse and neglect, the rights of their biological parents have been permanently terminated. Having been hurt by their family, most of these children lose their ability to trust.
Foster kids have no one to turn to except for their foster parents. With this in mind, any attempt to brighten the life of a foster child is never done so in vain. Even one additional Christmas present given to a foster child on Christmas Day can pay dividends in terms of improving the life of a foster child in New Jersey.
