ABSTRACT
Working with children in foster family settings requires a counselor’s un derstanding o f the multiple psychological issues that affect these children.
Unlike children growing up with their biological families and natural home environments, foster children regularly move to unfamiliar environments that too often have unstable living conditions. Oftentimes, these children grow up without a sense of control and power over their lives. Instead of enjoying a feeling o f choice, they carry pervasive feelings o f abandonment and rejec tion from biological family members, and a feeling of discontinuity and incon sistency in everyday living. Outside professionals, laws, and regulations control the lives o f foster care children through a court system that determines “what is in the best interest o f the child.” Legal authorities and welfare agencies de cide to leave these children with their biological families or to remove them from their own homes. Once placed in the foster care system, social workers and caretakers become surrogate parents who sometimes conflict with the natural families. These outside interventions disrupt these youngsters’ familiar home environments and school routines. Finally, foster care children have no control over the critical decisions affecting their entire lives that adults make about them.
