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19 views • April 12, 2018
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Judge asked, 'Does anyone want the child?'—mom posted what she heard to Facebook, response went viral-teaser.mov

Maggie Ren
The foster care system is overworked, understaffed, and often ignored by society in a heartbreaking way. Too often, stories are shared of families finding “forever homes” for infants they worked so hard to adopt. The opposite is true of the foster care system; foster children are often treated with disdain and discomfort, with the families they live with trying hard not to get too attached, in order to protect their own emotions. Foster mom Sarah shared the very reason that this is the wrong approach to fostering, though. On the Facebook page Foster Your Heart Out, Sarah shared a post following a heart-wrenching ordeal she went through in a courtroom with one of the children she’s fostered during the years. The post, which quickly went viral before getting picked up by popular parenting blog Scary Mommy, highlighted why so many of these children need the love they’re unfairly deprived of in a system that forces them to grow up way too fast. The foster care system has estimated that if one family from every religious congregation in the United States took in a child, there would be no children left uncared for. That seems like a small, simple request—but it actually highlights exactly how many children are currently slipping through the cracks. Over 400,000 children live in foster care each year in the United States, staying in the system on average for anywhere from six months to over two years. That’s 400,000 children that have to hear what Sarah’s foster son did in the courtroom—“does anyone want this child?” The nation’s juvenile jails, Sarah argues, are so full because the custody courtrooms are often far too empty. Statistics back up her pleas. The situations that leave children in foster care are never easy to stomach. But, as Sarah insists, the road to a better community starts with helping these children so desperately in need.
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