The Foster Care Dilemma: 2nd Edition

Publisher Marketing: This is a progressive series of editions of the same title designed to make people increasingly aware of the debilitating conditions foster youth experience in urban environments. The inherent dichotomy between keeping them safe without destroying their sense of purpose manifests itself in extremely poor results with foster children in large bureaucratic settings. After spending as much as $40,000/year/youth, one quarter wind up in jail, a third become homeless and less than five percent graduate from college. There are charitable organizations in some of the poorest urban environments which produce stunningly better results with homeless children. The reason that this condition is allowed to prevail is because the population in general is unaware of the plight that 0.12% of its population is suffering. Even in Los Angeles County, the worst foster care environment in the country, the foster care segment still only represents 0.19% of its ten million people. Society has no business putting down its most defenseless members in this way and we need to examine our hearts and minds to resist and eradicate the greatest evils in a system that has become hopelessly bureaucratized, inefficient and needlessly expensive. We must be able to look forward to the day when politicians in large jurisdictions are elected partly on how well foster children do under their command. The state of affairs in foster care in industrialized societies is complex and in large part mirrors the morality of the least educated parts of their communities. It has become an integral part of displaced youth in urban environments. It would not be this way if the public would insist on changing it. The money is being spent, but mostly wasted. In a modest way The Foster Care Dilemma, Inc. charitable foundation aims to enlighten the public without attacking well-meaning people now working within the system. Once the legislators in the jurisdictions where the major problems occur come under the gun of their voters, they will insist on correcting the most obvious discrepancies. The examples in this book are typical and will bring to your attention the grave misjudgment foster youth are made to live through just to survive, never mind thrive. Most disconcerting was the almost wicked determination of some foster care providers to wreak mindless cruelty on the defenseless children in their care. Our expectation was that interviews of children out of foster care would be discomforting, but not to the heartbreaking extent that we experienced. We will add public input from many more experienced people until future editions will draw the attention of the New York Times best seller list. Contributor Bio:  Wassenaar, Johan I was born in the northeastern part of South Africa near the Lebombo Mountains which forms the boundary with Mozambique. We lived in a Gold Mining town in the Drakensberg Mountains called Pilgrims Rest where my father was the District Surgeon. There was a steep pass down the precipitous edge of the gorge which led from a town called Graskop to the Bushfelt below which stretched out as far as the eye could see. That is the country that will always live in my soul. Amongst his black patients my father was known as "siksikane," the man with a knife. I came to North America as a young engineer with expertise in thermodynamics to go to work in the Canadian aircraft industry in the nineteen fifties during the Cold War when the object was to outpace the Soviet Union in defensive capability. For the next dozen years I was wrapped up in super-secret projects which was then the creative center of America. It all ended with the war in Vietnam which in history will be seen as America's nemeses. After that I made my living serving high tech industries with strategic planning services to diversify into non-defense areas. One of my clients hired me as the marketing member of a turn-around team and I hired a smart young Persian MBA who became a life-long friend Mark Amin involved me in his business ventures which took us into the motion picture field which proved beneficial to my family. I continued my engineering ventures in energy conservation. Living in Malibu turned me into somewhat of an environmentalist with practical ways of diminishing mans footprints on mother earth. I began writing novels in the late 1990's based on my life's experiences. Love in the shadows of Apartheid Sharon Inge Die for me Argentina Sex & Love Trilogy Life in the Fast Lane of Championship Horse Shows-In Blind Faith Book 1 and 2 The Foster Care Dilemma, a series of editions exposing the dreadful problems afflicting foster children in our modern world today.