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ABSTRACT
This article analyzes the experience of foster children through the lens of four frameworks: attachment theory, systemic intersectional oppression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and silencing. These frameworks all illustrate the way in which foster children live in an environment of ‘tenuous connections.’ This article also proposes that COVID-19 has further exacerbated these tenuous connections and that while pastoral caregivers are capable of playing an essential role in providing stability and safety to foster children, it may be difficult for them to do so, due to the inherent instability of foster children's lives.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Couture, Seeing Children Seeing God, 33.
2 Beam, To the End of June, 91.
3 “The Orphan Train Movement | Children's Aid,” accessed September 7, 2020, https://www.childrensaidnyc.org/about/orphan-train-movement.
4 “The Orphan Train and the Children Who Rode Them – New England Historical Society,” accessed September 7, 2020, https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/the-children-who-rode-orphan-train/.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Couture, Seeing Children Seeing God, 33.
8 In Learning from My Daughter, philosopher Eva Kittay offers a defense of why it is permissible to speak on behalf of a vulnerable population as a non-member of that population, in her case. In her case, she writes as the mother of a child who is cognitively incapacitated to such an extent that she is unable to communicate for herself, such that ‘to have her needs and wants reckoned along with those of others, the mentally disabled individual requires an advocate – a role that has voice at its center … . I speak as an advocate. Otherwise, my daughter and those who share her disability will be doubly disabled and silenced. So, I am left in the awkward position of speaking of an individual with a disability – needing to speak not only about her but, contra the disability dictum, for her, and to speak for and about her in a way that captures who she is and does her justice.’ As Kittay describes it, there are times when it is important for individuals to serve as the voice of others, to be their advocates, when they cannot speak for themselves. However, there are significant differences between serving in this role for an individual like Kittay's daughter, who might not otherwise be able to be able to communicate at all, by virtue of how her body functions, and between trying to speak on behalf of children in foster care, who often times are able to speak for themselves but are unable to be heard because of the noise that emerges from cultural constructions about the limitations of children's epistemic credibility as well as bias about the epistemic credibility of those from the marginalized races and classes from which foster children often emerge. In other words, it is unfortunate to me that the voices of foster children cannot be centered more in a paper like this due to the limitations imposed by structural forces over which an individual like myself has limited control. I look forward to a day in which this will not be the reality, and my hope is that a paper like this one, however flawed it may be, may nonetheless be a small contribution to that change. Kittay, Learning from My Daughter, 7.
9 For a nuanced analysis of this tension, see Beam, To the End of June.
10 “Trends in Foster Care and Adoption,” Children's Bureau | ACF, accessed September 7, 2020, https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/resource/trends-in-foster-care-and-adoption.
11 U S Department of Health and Human Services, “The AFCARS Report,” no. 10 (August 22, 2019): 6.
12 In 2018, 62% of were removed from their homes due to neglect. Other primary causes of removal include parental drug abuse, physical abuse, housing issues, behavioral problems, inability of a caretaker to care for a child, and parental incarceration. Department of Health and Human Services.
13 In the past, children of Native Americans were removed from their homes at higher rates than other non-Native American children and were often placed with white foster parents who attempted to acculturate them into white traditions and practices. The Indian Child Welfare Act now mandates child welfare workers to ask about a child's Native American heritage and to make it a priority to place Native American children with Native American relatives or members of their tribe.
14 Department of Health and Human Services, “The AFCARS Report.”
15 The mass incarceration of Black bodies in the United States means that Black relatives and foster parents often do not meet the background check requirements to take children into their homes because of their criminal records. This reality becomes but one example of how systemic racial oppression, enacted through the criminal justice system, perpetuates individual and collective racial trauma and fragments communities even outside of a prison's walls.
16 J. B. Wogan, “Nowhere Else to Go: Why Kids Are Sleeping in Child Welfare Offices,” October 10, 2017, https://www.governing.com/topics/health-human-services/gov-child-welfare-sleep-offices-texas-kansas.html.
17 Approximately 50% of foster children graduate from high school by age 18; 20% attend college and between 2% and 9% attain a bachelor's degree. 84% of foster children say they want to go to college. See National Working Group on Foster Care and Education, “Fostering Success in Education: National Factsheet on the Educational Outcomes of Children in Foster Care,” January 2014. See also Jessica Lahey, “Every Time Foster Kids Move, They Lose Months of Academic Progress,” The Atlantic, February 28, 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/02/every-time-foster-kids-move-they-lose-months-of-academic-progress/284134/.
18 National Working Group on Foster Care and Education, “Fostering Success in Education.”
19 While the team of child advocates is supposed to protect and advocate for the child, this system is far from perfect, as documented by the number of children who have been harmed while in care or who have died while in care. For a particularly disturbing example of how it is possible for an entire system of child advocates to fail at the task of protecting a child, see the case of Gabriel Fernandez, in which multiple advocates – including teachers, relatives, and child welfare workers – failed to report and/or remove Fernandez from the home of his mother and her boyfriend in which he was being abused and tortured. Fernandez was eventually murdered by his mother and boyfriend, who were brought to trial and convicted. Charges were also brought against several members of the child advocate team, although those were later dismissed.
20 While both the child's lawyer and the guardian ad litem advocate for the child in court, the latter's role is to be an impartial observer who advocates for what they perceive to be in the child's best interest, whereas the lawyer must take into account the child's stated desires and wishes, even if those wishes and desires do not align with the child's best interests. The difference between the two roles is particularly evident in cases that involve children who are old enough to make requests about their care.
21 John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth's research has no doubt shaped the overall field of child psychology, though the findings of both have come under criticism in recent years. Because Bowlby's experiments took place prior to pivotal biological findings about the role that DNA plays in human development, Bowlby may have over-emphasized the relationship to the caregiver at the exclusion of other environmental factors, including the role that DNA plays in human development. Likewise, The Strange Situation Procedure used by Ainsworth has since been criticized for attempting to generalize from a study limited to assessing the biological mother-child relationship in middle class families in the United States. For a helpful introduction to the research of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, see Holmes, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory; The Gale Group, A Study Guide for Psychologists and Their Theories for Students.
22 Kecia (last name not given), qtd., Beam, 144–5.
23 Lack of attachment may, in turn, correlate with struggles with self-concept as well as a sense of social belonging. For an insightful analysis of the unique challenges that the realities pose to feminist arguments for the relational self, see Katherine Davies, “When Home Isn't: Feminist Philosophy and the U.S. Foster Care System,” Blog of the American Philosophical Association, October 23, 2019, https://blog.apaonline.org/2019/10/23/when-home-isnt-feminist-philosophy-and-the-u-s-foster-care-system/.
24 This scenario presumes that abuse or neglect has actually occurred. However, it should be noted that the power that implicit bias and discrimination wield results in children being removed from homes due to these causes and not to abuse or neglect.
25 Therapeutic foster homes may be one exception to this, as they provide foster parents with more education (especially about trauma-informed care) as well as more ongoing support. It may be the case that one foster parent is required to stay at home to provide support for children. Children who enter therapeutic foster homes have often been moved multiple times and demonstrate significant emotional or behavioral issues.
26 For an important resource on how attachment theory may impact the experience of grief, particularly in relation to one's attachment to God, see chapters three through five of Kelley, Grief, 51–120.
27 Francine Cournos, qtd., Beam, 91.
28 Cris Beam explains that there is a debate in the foster care system about the significance of attachment as opposed to the significance of ensuring the child's physical safety and that this dichotomy affects everything from a welfare worker or judge's decision to remove a child from the home in the first place to terminating parental rights. By way of example, Beam writes of one foster parent who had given a stable home to a young child for a period of years; this home was the only one the child remembered. The foster parent wanted to adopt the child, but the child was then returned to the biological parent against the child's wishes. Beam raises the question of whether the child should have been returned because biological parents deserve to raise their children if possible or whether the child should have stayed with the foster parent to whom he’d developed a healthy sense of attachment. See pages 29–37.
29 Foster children also experience a lack of stability in their relationships with their entire system of caregivers and advocates. Large caseloads, high stress, and low pay often correlate with high turnover among caseworkers. When a child moves from one foster family to another, this often means that they are living in a new neighborhood, which in turn means that they must start therapy with a new therapist and begin attending a new school with a new teacher(s).
30 It is well-known that instances of abuse and neglect continue even when a child is in care: The ongoing troubles in the Texas child welfare system provide but one example of this. Judge Janis Graham Jack has ordered the state to comply with numerous changes to its child welfare system after ongoing reports of abuse and neglect emerged, including reports that children had been sexually abused by other children while others had been physically injured or restrained. At least one child died while in a residential treatment center. The state of Texas has yet to comply with the judge's requests. See Edgar Walters, “Federal Judge Says She Will Again Hold Texas in Contempt of Court for Failing to Meet Foster Care Reforms,” The Texas Tribune, September 4, 2020, https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/04/texas-foster-care-lawsuit-judge-hearing-contempt/; Cameron Langford, “Federal Judge Blasts Failures of Texas Foster Care System,” Courthouse News September 4, 2020, https://www.courthousenews.com/federal-judge-blasts-failures-of-texas-foster-care-system/.
31 Though their needs are unique, foster children are not the only children to experience tenuous physical, psychological, economic, and spiritual connections. For an expansive analysis of tenuous connections in the lives of children from pastoral and practical theological perspectives, see Wright and Moore, Children, Youth, and Spirituality in a Troubling World; Flesberg, The Switching Hour.
32 For more on Wimberly, “Black Youth Speak Out.”
33 Minorities are overrepresented in the United States among the population living in poverty. While Black individuals make up roughly 13% of the overall population, they represent 21% of individuals living at or below the poverty level; Native Americans make up 1% of the overall population and roughly 25% of those living at or below the poverty level. Asians make up 6% of the overall population and 10% of those living at or below the poverty level. The number of Hispanic individuals living at or below the poverty level is roughly equal to their overall population. 76% of the population is white; they make up 10% of the population living at or below the poverty level. See “U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: United States,” accessed September 7, 2020, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/IPE120218; “Poverty Facts,” accessed September 7, 2020, https://www.povertyusa.org/facts.
34 Law enforcement officials have become well-known for their disproportionate attacks on Black bodies. For an important theological analysis that takes into account the historical and contemporary practice of law enforcement's engagement with Black bodies see Douglas, Stand Your Ground.
35 For primer on the pastoral theological implications of individualism in a neoliberal culture, see Rogers-Vaughn. Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age.
36 For an overview of intersectional oppression from a pastoral theological perspective, see Walker-Barnes, I Bring the Voices of My People. See also For an overview of intersectional oppression from a pastoral theological perspective, see Ramsay, “Intersectionality.” For a helpful introduction to the concept of intersectionality, see the writings of Kimberlé Crenshaw, including “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 139–67 (1989). Reprinted in The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique 195–217 (2nd ed., edited by David Kairys, Pantheon, 1990); and “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,” 43 Stanford Law Review 1241–99 (43: 1991).
37 For an overview of the social ecology of impoverished children and the tenuous connections that emerge in their lives as a result, see Couture, 23–47.
38 For a literature review and introduction to how pastoral awareness of systemic oppression can change the practice of care, see Nancy Ramsay's article, “Analyzing and Engaging Asymmetries of Power: Intersectionality as a Resource for Practices of Care” in Nancy J. Ramsay, ed., Pastoral Theology and Care: Critical Trajectories in Theory and Practice, 1st edition (Chichester, UK ; Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018).
39 David Karp, Beyond the Headlines Episode 59 David Karp, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvpDly7Dmk4&feature=youtu.be.
40 Children may also experience intersectional stress if their relatives are at higher risk for contracting COVID-19. Eaves and Al-Hindi explain that, “The political mobilization of ‘pre-existing conditions’- and ‘co-morbidities’ – hypertension, diabetes, and obesity – and the violent stereotypical association with race does just that, rendering Black bodies as pathologized.” Eaves and Al-Hindi, “Intersectional Geographies and COVID-19.”
41 Robert T. Garrett, “Federal Judge ‘Concerned’ over High Rate of COVID-19 among Texas Foster Children,” Dallas News, September 4, 2020, https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2020/09/04/federal-judge-concerned-over-high-rate-of-covid-19-among-texas-foster-children/.
42 Pecora et al. Improving Family Foster Care.
43 Robert Dykstra's article offers a helpful primer on how to have pastoral care conversations around difficult topics with teenagers. Even though the article does not focus on foster children specifically, the issues raised about boundaries and truth-telling would be relevant for conversations with children who are either nearing the end of or who have graduated from foster care. See Dykstra, “Ministry with Adolescents.”
44 For an example of the multiple traumas that emerge in the lives of foster children and how a pastoral caregiver might respond, see chapter seven – ‘The Case of Laurie’ – in Dykstra, Counseling Troubled Youth, 94–108.
45 van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score, 43–4.
46 Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 7–32.
47 Shelly Rambo's image of Holy Saturday may be a helpful theological resource for caregivers engaged in trauma-informed ministry, especially when caregiving is occurring in situations where the trauma is ongoing, as it may well be for a child who is currently placed in the foster system. By framing Holy Saturday as a theologically helpful image for understanding trauma, Rambo recognizes that a central dynamic of trauma that involves being in the middle of a seemingly dire story that appears to both be at a standstill and that appears to have no ending ahead. Being willing to dwell in Holy Saturday – and not to rush to Easter Sunday – becomes an important way for pastoral caregivers to frame the act of offering care to a traumatized individual, such as a foster child who has little control over the outcome of their case and finds themselves dwelling in a time that appears to be endlessly traumatizing with no hope of an end in sight. See Rambo, Spirit and Trauma.
48 Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 7–32.
49 For but one of many examples of how pastoral caregivers privilege and defend meaning making as a primary goal of caregiving conversations see Kelley, Grief, 71.
50 Kelley, Grief, 66.
51 For more on how understanding, hope, and acceptance can be important pastoral tools that can help address struggles related to attachment see Kelley, Grief, Chapter 3, 51–71.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Danielle Tumminio Hansen
Danielle Tumminio Hansen is the Assistant Professor of Pastoral Theology & Director of Field Education at Seminary of the Southwest.