She and three younger brothers entered Indiana's foster care system in 1992 because of parental neglect. By December, Amanda had lived in 11 foster homes and had been removed from one adoptive family because of abuse.
Combined with the removal from her birth parents' home, Amanda had moved on average once every nine months for the first 10 years of her life.
Her brothers had fared little better. One had been in nine foster homes; the other two in eight.
The siblings had been apart for so long that they had little emotional attachment to one another. To help them forge bonds, their adoption caseworker began taking them on weekly outings.
But the children and more than 11,400 others like them in the state's foster care and institutional systems are at risk of never being able to bond with anyone.
For years, studies have warned about the dangers of children drifting among foster homes. The American Psychiatric Association in 1994 specifically cited foster care drift as a cause of reactive attachment disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
The inability to bond with others can have devastating consequences. Researchers have referred to children who've experienced multiple placements as "psychopaths in the making."
A study by the National Association of Social Workers found that 80 percent of inmates in Illinois prisons had at one time been foster children. Other studies have found disproportionate numbers of former foster children in homeless missions, runaway shelters and drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinics.
The break up of the American family seems to be the leading cause of not only imprisonment but drug usage and emotional illness.Even though caseworkers know of the consequences, they still frequently move children from home to home. Child advocates say the moves are seldom warranted and at times violate state policy.The more kids raised in broken homes, sent to foster care, or even raised by single moms seems to be the fuel that is causing our social structure to be so dysfunctional.
"Caseworkers still move kids because they've become 'too attached' to their foster parents," says James Kenny, a Rensselaer psychologist and a foster parent for 25 years. "I want to tell them, 'You've become too attached to your husband. We're going to give you a new one tonight.'"
Yet, caseworkers are not solely to blame. The problems are systemic, and the responsibility for continuing to allow children to wander among homes must be spread throughout the Division of Family and Children.
