Who Are we Really Letting Adopt Children Today?

Foster children are usually placed in foster homes for all sorts of reasons, but with that, each child has their own story.  According to Child Welfare, as of September 30,2008, there were approximately 463,000 children in the United States that were in a foster home. With this many children in foster care, how much do we really know about all the families that these children stay with? Do we know if the parents are stable? As for 10 year old twins, Victor and Nubia and their adoptive parents Jorge and Carmen Barahona, we really didn’t know all the details.

According to CNN, Victor and Nubia were placed with the Barahona family in 2004 and Florida’s Department of Children and Families was called to the home several times but they could never find reason to take the children back.  Well, Monday morning Jorge Barahona’s truck parked on the  side of the interstate with Barahona and Victor covered in chemicals and Nubia dead in the back.  Jorge “told police he was distraught over the death of his daughter and had intended to commit suicide by dousing himself with gasoline and setting himself afire, the affidavit said. Barahone said he didn’t go through with his suicide plan because his son was with him, the document added.”  According to Fox News, Barahona also taped the shower curtain to the wall and burned the boy with acid.  The boy also had “previous evidence of torture all over his body: a fractured clavicle and arm, scarring on his lower abdomen and buttocks and ligature marks on his wrists, implying that this 10 year old child had been tied up like an animal, straining to break free.”  With stories like this, it makes me really question some of the families these children are placed with.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not by any meaning saying that every foster family treats their children like these parents.  I have family members who are foster parents as well as friends who were placed in foster homes.  But this is by no means an acceptable lifestyle for any human being to live.  How could the Florida Department of Children and Families not know that something was wrong?  They had received several calls over the years about issues at the home but they never could find anything wrong.  They even got a call on a weekend but said that they don’t work weekends.  And just a few days after that call, they found Nubia dead.  Just because they “don’t work weekends” doesn’t mean that they could just blow off these children.  These are lives we are talking about, and helpless children nonetheless.  It really floors me to think that the social workers put off the case until a day they worked.  There is a good chance that they could have saved Nubia’s life; but now we will never know.  I really hope that this article is a wake-up call to the many social workers out there and not putting off their cases until a week day, especially if something doesn’t seem right.