Unfortunately, the other options are limited. They can put all the boys in foster care, but there are plenty of bad outcomes there, especially for adolescents. Also, the one who is 17 is about to age out of foster care, and then he’s legally on his own. There’s almost no possibility of adoption: the system is designed to put them back with their natural parents, regardless of how long they thrash around in limbo.
Realistically, the best likely outcome is that the state can make the parents get their act together sufficiently to give the younger boys a decent life for a while. The fact that they seem to have two parents together is something.
“The fact that they seem to have two parents together is something.”
Yep. That sure stood out like a sore thumb, didn’t it?
Prayers up for these kids.
Beau and his former wife (he was widowed) had 14 foster kids over a 20 year period. Only two, that he still has sporadic contact with, have gone on to live moderately crappy lives as adults; quite a few others turned to crime and drugs and the consequences a life like that brings. A few died young; drugs, car wrecks, that kind of sadness...
It’s really heartbreaking how ‘disposable’ children are; either in the womb and, then, outside of it.
I have no answers other than I admire people who at least TRY, as did these Officers. I raised a Stepson and two Nephews; crappy parents, mental illness and drug and alcohol use were rampant in their natal families. ONE of the three is, again, living a moderately crappy life as an adult; the other two are lost causes.
You are correct. Friends of mine are adopting three siblings, despite mom and two of the dads being in prison they had to wait six years for their parental rights to be terminated.
The third dad was fighting the adoption even though he had never seen his daughter in her eight years of life and bluntly stated that he had no wish to see her.
Happily they have a good social worker (they are out there!) who kept them with their foster family even though she was pressured to relocate the children to prevent them from becoming attached to their foster family.
The system is messed up.
They are probably both meth heads!!! They will stay together because they have the drug in common!!!