Everyone looks forward to the new year with a resolution–something that would make the coming year memorable and better for ourselves.
This year I’d like to challenge everyone to resolve to do something that will make a difference in the life of a child. Rather than just looking at ways to make ourselves feel better, let’s try to make someone else feel better. Let’s focus on making a difference in the life of a single child who desperately needs our help.
As we approach the turn of the century, our society is faced with some very complex issues related to children. In particular, our foster-care system and the children who have been in harm’s way need our attention. The past year brought many new reforms and needed changes within the foster-care system (“Cleaning up the foster-care morass,” Main news, Dec. 22). The most important of these reforms pertain to the changes in the permanency laws, which help place children into a more permanent place in a shorter period of time. Moving children into a place where they can remain throughout their childhood clearly is far preferable to having them bounce from home to home.
These sweeping changes at the federal and state level have provided children with the rights and the voice they have so desperately needed for a long time. But these new changes in social-welfare policies and child-welfare laws rely heavily on one very important factor–that there will always be families that are willing to adopt or stay committed to these abused children until they can successfully return home.
These changes in child-welfare practice and law rely heavily on the idea that there are enough families who are willing to allow severely abused or neglected children to be placed within their homes. Illinois and our entire country are relying on loving, caring and well-trained foster-care families to dedicate themselves to making a difference in the lives of our children and ultimately provide them with a safe, permanent home.
Stability is absolutely crucial in the life of a child who simply wants a family and a place to call home. As we enter this new year, we need more families that will consider making a difference in the life of a child.
In 1998 please consider becoming a trained foster-care parent by calling your local foster-care agency or volunteering to help a child in your own community. Together we can make a difference in the life of a child, one child at a time. Let’s make 1998 a better year for our children as well as ourselves.
