while i advocate 100% calling CPS....

...don't necessarily think everyone that your lives would have been much better if CPS intervened..

the outcomes of kids raised in foster care are sad and the statistics are grim.

if perhaps CPS intervened and your families were worked with so that reunification could happen and you could be safe as a child or if you could have been adopted into a safe family, then lives would be better..... but being removed by CPS does not guarentee that at all.

times have changed with the passages of many foster care laws in the 1990s, but they have not changed that much. almost anyone can become a foster parent and the training requirements are a joke. within 2 months you can have kids in your home and paid for it. 2 MONTHS to care for kids that have already been traumatized.

services for kids are poor. i barely saw a therapist even though i had been really hurt by my bioparents. i left foster care after 12 years with an eating disorder, SI, PTSD and other problems.

workers are supposed to check on kids every month. but they are so overloaded with cases, that it could be months before they check in on a foster kid in a placement. mostly you see them when something is going wrong from the foster parents perspective or you are being moved.

in some places, i was treated as bad as i was with my bioparents.

group homes are no better.

and foster children are 4-6 times more likely to be abused in foster care than other children.....because they have no-one to rely on and because they are generally victims to begin with.
foster children have 4 times higher rates of PTSD compared to veterans (who are already higher than the general population).
everytime a foster kid is moved, they lose 3-6 months of schooling

at age 18, kids are kicked out of the system with NOTHING. i didnt even have a highschool dipolma and certainly no place to go.
there are some ILP (independent living programs) but not enough.

over 50% of foster kids that age-out are homeless within the first year. less than 2% graduate college. many become addicted to drugs or wind up in prison.

foster care is no place for a child... i know because i grew up in it and i just got out 2 years ago (so it is recent)

....and yes, it saved me from my bioparents but introduced me to a whole nother side of evil....

.....