When Foster Care Hurts

Foster kids face higher risk of addiction, homelessness.

"Children are entitled to be protected from abuse, neglect and harm or threat of harm."

That's the first 'guiding principle' of the B.C. Child, Family and Community Service Act -- the legislation that mandates the foster care and child protection systems operated by the provincial Ministry of Child and Family Development.

But what if, instead of providing the promised protection, this well-intentioned government agency's contractors beat you as a child?

Serena Fabian (not her real name) says that's exactly her situation.

Social workers apprehended her as a young child from her mother, she recounted. But instead of protecting her, she says, the Ministry in fact exposed her to much more "abuse, neglect and harm" than she believes she ever would have suffered at home.

Now 32, Fabian says she lives with memories of countless sexual assaults -- starting when she was seven years old -- inflicted by the teenaged son of her foster mother, as well as beatings, screaming tirades and neglect from those who were paid to care for her.

The trauma, she believes, set her up for a decade of alcoholism, drug addiction and violence starting in her mid-teens. She ran away from her foster family and became homeless.  (more...)

When Foster Care Hurts