Opinion: Bacon Should Have No Bearing on Becoming a Foster Parent

Pork is unhealthy. Pigs eat their own feces. Plus pork itself is just not a healthy choice of food. Everything else aside, face the facts. Stop being racist, stop making judgments and accusations. This has got to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard

"the truth is, this "practicing Muslim" is shacking up with some guy, and I think Foster programs have a huge responsibility to not place children in a home that could be unstable... I know several devout Muslims, and they say that living together is NOT okay with their religion at all, and wonder about the stability of this couple... THAT issue is probably the real reason that they didn't place kids with her, not the bacon story..."

You are an ignorant fool. I am a practicing muslim woman living with my agnostic puerto rican boyfriend for 5 years, and we are better than stable, we are in love. But i'll tell you what. If I worked at a foster agency, I would NEVER let a child live with someone who makes these comments so blithely and thoughtlessly. Word vomit, you dumb airhead. Go educate yourself.

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Somebody needs to wake up and smell the coffee. The entire Jewish religion is forbidden to eat pork. I think she has a case here.

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Today, the court in my area sentenced a wonderful woman to 35 years in prison for throwing her two children off a bridge. One survived. According to these geniuses, she would have been a wonderful foster parent because she wouldn't mind serving a BLT for lunch. It figures.

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After reading this article I think I have come across a way to prevent our Muslim terrorist friends from using any more airliners as a means of suicide crashes: Muslims are opposed to pork in any manner....therefore it stands to reason that if all airlines required a small pice of pork to be carried on all passenger planes on every flight, then no Muslim in his or her right mind would dare think of commiting a terrorist event by commandeering a plane and causing it to crash! Brilliant, if I say so myself.

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First, let me comment on the fact that the author of the article has inappropriately titled it. He builds a case for questioning standards used for approving foster parents not a case focusing on bacon and fostering.

My comment regarding the bacon issue is that apparently from what he has written, this foster parent is unbending in regard to the issue of pork products. How far does this parent go with this issue? If a foster child is in the public school system is she going to forbid the child to eat a hot lunch that includes a pork product as pork seen as 'unclean'? Will she forbid the child to eat a meal at a friend's home because they may serve a pork product? Or is the child going to have to go through some kind of a ritual if he/she does eat pork when not in the foster home for a particular meal or snack?

If the foster parent is this unbending, this is not good for the child. They need an enviroment of acceptance and nurturing to grow both physically and psychologically. Is this the only issue with which this foster parent is going to be unbending? Every time a child is moved in the 'system', that child is going to go through a time of seperation, loss, and wondering about their own worth as an individual. They shouldn't have to worry about whether this unidentified item on their plate is pork on top of what they are already dealing with.

When we were doing foster care, we were told that if the child had any religious affiliation we were to see to it that the 'rules' of that religious affiliation were followed by the child, regardless of our beliefs. After dealing with scheduling conflicts because of this several times, we requested that the children placed with us were of beliefs similiar to our own.

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The fact of the matter is that NO ONE in the Department of Social Services can know who will be a good parent. They don't have a crystal ball. Abuse is FIVE TIMES higher in foster care than in the general public. DSS is just experimenting with foster kids. Of course, prospective foster parents will put on a good front to get the kids and the checks that come with them. I don't think the food issue was the issue but the fact that the prospective foster mother was so inflexible. That is not a good sign of a good mother.

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The Governor's proposed budget for 2008-09 includes $4.179 billion in spending from all
funds for the child welfare system, of which $1.14 billion are from the General Fund.3
The primary sources of federal funding for the child welfare system include Titles IV-B
(child welfare services) and IV-E (foster care) of the Social Security Act, with additional
funding in Titles IV-A (TANF), XIX (Medicaid) and XX (block grants).
Most stakeholders agree that current federal funding mechanisms for child welfare place
a greater priority on supports to children while in foster care at the expense of prevention
efforts and supports to help at-risk families care for their children at home. The federal
Title IV-E program is an open-ended entitlement program that guarantees federal
reimbursement to states for maintaining an eligible child in foster care. This program
accounts for approximately 48% of federal child welfare spending in the states. The
federal Title IV-B program provides funds to states for family preservation and support
services, reunification services and adoption promotion. Unlike federal Title IV-E
funding, Title IV-B funding is a capped entitlement and considered discretionary funding,
which is subject to the annual appropriation process. Title IV-B is an important source of
funding for prevention and early intervention services, yet these funds account for only
approximately five percent of all federal funding on child welfare. Thus, federal
financing has historically been a barrier to the implementation of many strategies to
prevent children and their families from unnecessarily entering foster care.4
¾ Foster Care
Most of California's approximately 80,000 foster children entered foster care because of
Neglect (rather than abuse or abandonment). Three-quarters of these children were
minorities or children of color in 2006. African-American children in particular were
disproportionately represented.5 In 2006, foster children lived with foster parents
(approximately 36% of placements), kin (36%), group home providers (or congregate
care facilities, 8%), or in other living arrangements. Group care placements are the least
preferred and most expensive (ranging from $1,454 to $6,371 per child per month) of
these major placement categories.

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Um...there are Muslim children in foster care.

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