To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care

A terrific work of narrative nonfiction, masterful in use of data and storytelling to teach about a tragic topic. I’m awed and grateful for this contribution. I learned so much.

This book was hard to put down when it covered the stories of actual kids in foster care, but it lost momentum whenever the author climbed up on her soapbox to make inflammatory statements which are blatantly contradicted by empirical research.First off, Beam is a talented writer and she does a superb job weaving the stories of various foster children and parents throughout the narrative. A large number of children and families were presented, but the book never became too scattered and I was anxious to see the outcome for each child and family. I also found myself cheering on the foster parents who went beyond the call of duty to help kids, yet still feeling sympathy for the foster parents who made an effort yet somehow fell short. There are no villains in this book; what we have here is a candid portrayal of people trying to make the best of difficult circumstances. It is hard to point the finger at a foster parent and assign blame when they are essentially trying to raise someone else's child with a meager stipend from the state.But the book is more than a narration of the lives of foster children and parents, for it delves into the inner workings of the U.S. foster care system and attempts to understand why the system is the way it is. In particular, the author grapples with the saddening statistics that relate to life outcomes for foster children, many of whom become homeless once they "age out" and very few of whom will ever graduate from college. These statistics are indeed depressing, and in such a context it is natural for one to become angry and look for someone or something to blame. The author has chosen her scapegoat, and it is the system itself.Time after time, an emotional story of a child or parent is interrupted so that Beam may launch an attack on the foster care system. Some of these attacks are legitimate and well-deserved-- far too many children are bounced from home to home, for example, which makes it difficult for children to form an attachment that is so crucial to the child development process. The system doesn't have to be this way, of course, and it is good that there are people like Beam to call attention to these issues and lead the charge for reform.But unfortunately Beam does not stop there. Instead, she goes further than the evidence merits in issuing blanket indictments of the system that are not just unsupported, but actually contradicted, by empirical evidence. Here are two prominent examples:(1) On page 63, Beam notes that the second and third NIS studies (national surveys of child abuse and neglect) "found no significant differences in the incidences of abuse and neglect across any ethnic or racial lines." This is misleading and has been de-bunked by Brett Drake and Melissa Jonson-Reid in their paper "NIS interpretations: Race and the National Incidence Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect" (published in Children and Youth Services Review, a leading peer-reviewed journal). Long story short, the data from both NIS-2 and NIS-3 show blacks having much higher maltreatment rates than whites. The reason this relation is "suddenly" statistically significant in NIS-4 whereas it was not significant before is because the sample size increased, thereby increasing the power of the statistical test and reducing the standard error.(2) At several points in the book, Beam notes the disproportionately high number of black children in foster care (47% of the kids in foster care are black, yet blacks comprise only 19 percent of the U.S. population of children, p. 61). She attributes this to several factors, one of which is racism/bias against black/poor people. This explanation has been offered up for years but unfortunately for the author it too has been de-bunked, this time by the paper "Is the overrepresentation of the poor in child welfare caseloads due to bias or need?" by Melissa Jonson-Reid, Brett Drake, and Patricia Kohl (published in Children and Youth Services Review). These authors, who unlike Beam actually bothered to do empirical tests with actual data, find that "overrepresentation of poor children is driven largely by the presence of increased risk among the poor children that come to the attention of child welfare rather than high levels of systemic class bias."The author's blatant disregard of empirical findings suggested that either (1) she did not adequately research the topic before writing the book or (2) she did research the topic, but chose to ignore studies which contradict her pre-determined beliefs. In either case her credibility as an author is seriously undermined; how can we trust someone who either does not know the facts or chooses to hide them to advance her agenda?The narratives of the foster children and parents made the book memorable, but the author's biased attacks against the U.S. foster care system reduced the book to nothing more than a pro-reunification-diatribe that paints the system as a racially-driven, heartless bureaucracy that is yanking children out of loving homes simply because the families happened to be poor or black. The U.S. foster care system indeed suffers from a host of problems, but inane attacks based on discredited theories will get us nowhere.

As a former foster kid, I relate to so many aspects of this book. If you are serious about change in this system, you have to read this. No one has documented the struggle of foster kids like this book has. I could hardly put it down after reading the first paragraph.. Highlighted the entire thing. Our foster system is incredibly broken.. and perhaps even more tragic than the system itself is where it leaves us after we turn 18. I was put into foster care after several years of kinship care at the age of 17. My CPS worker told me the odds of me finding a permanent home was low because of my age. She was right. I hardly found a foster home at all. I was held in a mental hospital for a month and a half while I waited for someone to claim me. A mental hospital because they had no where else to hold me.. and 3 foster homes later I was put into an RTC - Not because I was a trouble kid, but because no one wanted me. I turned 18 with no one to turn to. I still can't drive and I have been in and out of homeless & DV shelters for several months. I have nowhere to go. So not only does the foster care system desperately need reform, but the aftercare system as well. I know far too many people with stories similar to mine. When will this change?

These small birds would warn the miners of toxic fumes with their smaller resistance and rapid decline. Foster children as our most vulnerable members, warn us of the changes of national issues such as unemployment and health care. These are children who have no other safe options than state care. This book explores the larger issues, but illustrates them with individual stories of children in different phases of the system.Infants come with their own vulnerabilities, but also with the most options. As desirable objects for adoption, the rights and advantages of preserving the family must be weighed against the hope of a new permanent family. As the child ages, so do their options and the memory of the birth family becomes more compelling. Finally, a child "aging out" at 18 or 21, runs great risk of leaving shelter with no meaningful back up or preparation. They are less likely to be prepared for independence, and they lack that great American fall back of moving home.A society must be judged by its treatment of the least of its citizens. In this case, the outcome of our endeavors is vital to the whole country. It behoove sinus all to consider the facts and opinions presented in this book. The author's prose enables the reader to undertake the task with pleasure. The characters are fascinating and present conundrums that have left me pondering well past the last page.

This collection of biographical stories observed from parents and kids in the foster care system is a quick read that provides a lot of insights into how even well-intentioned foster parents can fail and how even kids who want to be adopted and integrate into a loving family struggle to realize their dream. The book also provides some insight into how the juvenile justice system dovetails with foster care. I recommend this book to anyone interested in some "on the ground" portraits of the flaws in foster care. The book falls short in offering the same concrete portrait of what it looks like when things go right or how suggested repairs would look in the real world. Instead, it may unintentionally leave people interested in becoming foster parents torn between recognizing the great need the system has for capable, loving foster parents while at the same time feeling like these kids are too often a lost cause. The major success story in the book focuses on adults who live in a foster care lstyle group home, which left me feeling like it is only in adulthood, after the natural turbulence of teenage rebellion has passed, that foster kids or former foster kids have a chance of healing.

Amazing to see how the care system compares to that of the US. Such a fantastic read!