Writing Samples

Foster parents are needed
by Kevin Dowler

Turning up the volume of the television, trying to drown out an argument of drunken parents over the last bottle of beer, is not the answer to family problems.

Nor is spending hours at video parlors to escape the madness of an unstable home life.

Kids have only a few ways of dealing with poor family life and one of the worst ways to cope is dealing with the same problem.

Alcohol is the basis of most home problems and that is what some desperate kids turn to.

Sooner or later the family is broken up by social services or divorce and the kids are left hanging onto a broken idea of a family life which for them probably only existed on television.

The picture we are all given of family life on television is a false one, never having existed in any of our lives except on television.

If an average kid finds his home life dull and uncaring compared to what television shows him, just imagine how kids with alcoholic parents must feel.

The kids pulled from unstable families have two alternatives. They can go into provincial institutions or if they are lucky they can be placed into a foster home.

This week the people who take these kids in and try to give them a feel of a natural loving home as Foster Parents are being appreciated for their work.

Also in the same week, Big Brothers and Big Sisters are being appreciated for their work helping kids.

People from both of these groups are quite unrecognizable on the street from any other people in our communities, but it is the work they do now which will be recognizable in the future when the kids they work with become valuable members of tomorrow’s society.

Without the giving of time, guidance and love of these people, many of these kids would be lost without the needed help of their elders.

It is not only the kids that benefit from these volunteers’ work.

The parents of the kids also benefit.

Sometimes, being lifted of the responsibility of children gives them a chance to get themselves together, even becoming stable enough to become responsible parents.

The goal of the foster parents is to get the families back together. Today foster parents work together with the kids, natural parents and social workers toward the goal of reuniting the family.

Family problems are not new and neither are broken families, but today, with volunteer workers as foster parents and as big brothers or sisters, families and children are offered that extra chance at a life of love rather than scorn.

That gift of love given from foster parents and big brothers is something special that cannot be simply thanked for in one week and forgotten.

It takes a special sense of patience and foresight, to know the hours spent with these kids today will continue to pay off in the future hours of these lucky foster kids and little brothers and sisters of today.