Hacker Cinema
Instant Family
2018 · Film · 118 min
Directed by Sean Anders
When Pete and Ellie decide to start a family, they stumble into the world of foster care adoption. They hope to take in one small child but when they meet three siblings, including a rebellious 15 year old girl, they find themselves speeding from zero to three kids overnight.
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2 comments on Hacker News
See for example the largest study on CPS ever:
https://sci-hub.se/10.1257/aer.97.5.1583
Or it's popular summary "Troubled homes better than foster care":
https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-07-02-foster-study_N.htm
And let's not forget just how bad the reputation of CPS is where it comes to getting things wrong. Some studies claim that false accusations of child abuse, because there is no standard of proof for taking the kids away (only for locking up the perpetrators), that the false diagnoses and false accusations far outnumber the true ones.
And like anyone who's seen an orphanage (they don't like to be called that anymore) and half of all foster homes knows. Seeing damaged kids in those places is perfectly normal: those places damage kids. These places are not hospitals, where patients come in damaged and get fixed. These places damage kids, they don't fix them. They're more like the ragged pillow at the bottom of a half-pipe, a catchment area for broken bones, doing MUCH more to protect the reputation of the rest of the system than preventing or helping with injuries.
And the horrible thing about such places is that they effectively prevent the kids from having a future (they have extremely bad schools, no alternatives, limited learning materials, ...), but throw them out at 18 years (and please: 21 years or even something ridiculous like 45 years would NOT be better). Please stop pretending that after 10 years where crime (from stealing from other kids to dealing drugs) is the only way to get even a trivial little extra, no-one would remain clean.
That only happens in protected settings. And the sad truth is that even very bad parents still provide a very protected setting for kids.
Besides, these places, for the large majority they don't even try: treatment, though often the very reason kids get taken away, effectively doesn't happen in such places. Just 1 underpaid person, often without any qualifications, per 15 or 20 kids, and some director "handling" 20 groups. That's all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Term_12
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Crasher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_Family
Please note: "System Crasher" is the more realistic of these movies (especially "Instant Family" is extremely toned down, I can guarantee a kid doesn't just shout 2 sentences if they fear everything they have will be taken away. They fight and scream and cry and kick and ... for 2 months).
If you watch "System Crasher" 5 times you will even start to see WHAT is happening. This kid made a mistake. Mistake lead to reputation (ie. to school teacher at the very least pestering her), which escalated matters. Help, effectively meant using violence against the child and more and more fear. And of course, the kid never gets any say, and therefore never learns WHY one needs control over oneself. This escalates and escalates and escalates BECAUSE OF YOUTH SERVICES. If they refused to intervene in the beginning of the problem, the odds of it just blowing over were very, very high, as the kid and parents would be forced to self-regulate their relationship. That would have happened, and at that point there would no longer have been a problem. And, frankly, it's hard to argue that any tactic, other than what was done, was worse, given the outcome.
> Not locked in cages ? What do you suppose happens to these kids if they were to, say, go back to their biological parents. Just walk out. And before you say "no bars, no locks", it is actually the case that large pieces of the justice system has no bars either.
>Something is a cage if you can't leave. If violence will be used to return you to that place, that takes the place of locks. Those kids are very much locked up.
They would be returned to their legal guardian, foster parent or otherwise. How does this not apply to any child?
> If you were PHYSICALLY harming them, yes. Psychologically you must realize that those people, for those kids, are a threat. Each of those individuals is a risk for them to get placed away from you, again. If they see something (even misinterpret something, totally out of context), they will get ripped out again. My point is this is the exact opposite of safety, this is far worse than daily beatings. In other words, those people are there to protect family judges and child care investigators from getting accused of causing abuse, they aren't there for the safety of the child at all.
Again, you're talking to an actual foster parent. Our children have a healthy relationship with their case managers, GALs, therapists, teachers, etc. We, the foster parents, work with all of them to make sure this is so, but honestly it happens organically. Our current children absolutely love their case manager. They enjoy the time they spend with him.
> Reminds me of the scene in "instant family" in the hospital where the child sees the foster parents trying to tell the truth about the nail accident. IMMEDIATELY the child panics, tears in her eyes, and refuses, with an initial angry fit and shouting to her foster parents (whom she really does not want to lose) to let the child care worker talk to anyone but her. Why do you suppose she has this reaction ? Do you not see the treat ? Do you think it would have been the first time that sudden re-placement for a dumb reason without asking her happened to her ?
> Here it is: https://youtu.be/GcrDSzfaydo?t=220
This is a movie. It is "based on" a real story, but look up what "based on" really means. Not much.
However, first, I've not said placements do not disrupt. They do. It is strongly discouraged. Obviously, this child would rather stay with her new foster parents than her last. You can clearly see she's forming a healthy bond with the new foster parents and is willing to "protect" them in order to stay. This isn't as bad as you're making it out to be. In fact, this is good that she's formed a bond with her foster parents. In fact, it is good that she trusts the case worker enough to go and talk to her about this incident.
>And let me assure you, compared to what you sometimes read in child protection papers, this was a very mild reaction by that child. Very often a child will respond to such an event by running away. I hope you can understand where such a reaction comes from.
Children in care have been traumatized most of not all their lives. They have over developed amygdala. They are in constant fight, flight or flee anyway, so I have no doubt that a few would run away.
>And let me ask you. If you had zero control over your own life...
Let me ask you. What child has complete control over their life?
>.., but had 10 people regularly have a conference and if at that conference decisions are made, they are implemented with brutal violence on you. Would you consider this a way to avoid harm to you ?
Nobody brutally harms foster children. This is patently false.
>Which is why you are harming those kids. And I get it, you can't fix it. You can't stop it. That unfortunately doesn't change the fact that you are harming them. But as I'm sure you've heard often in foster care: the world just isn't fair.
I am not harming them. It is traumatic to be removed from family. On that we can agree. However, children can and do form healthy loving bonds with their foster parents. It is absolutely possible for kids to love bio parents and foster parents simultaneously. That loving bond helps to heal them and the thrive and flourish while in care.