Foster care is full of regulations that at first glance may seem obnoxious and unnecessary. For example, anytime you take your kids out of your home county, you have to run it by the children's social worker. And if you are going to take them out of county overnight, you may have to give quite a bit of notice so that the social worker can get a judge to sign off. What's the big deal? If I live in Palo Alto and want to go to the zoo in San Jose, I have to get permission??
Well, let me tell you a story. A few decades ago, a man named Jim Jones was building a cult, and he encouraged his cult families to become foster homes. They brought the foster kids with them when the cult moved to South America. In 1978 Jones organized a mass murder-suicide, poisoning and killing almost 600 adults and over 300 children, many of whom were foster children. After this massacre, investigators found that not one of the children's social workers knew of the kids' whereabouts.
For every foster care regulation that inconveniences families on a daily basis, there is an underlying protective purpose that makes the extra effort worthwhile. So we are going to try to be patient and grateful for these inconveniences because they make it much more difficult for dangerous people to hurt foster kids.
