There’s about 2 million people in the United States today waiting to adopt and the process can even take up to 4 years to finalize. Statistics have shown that over half the children in the foster care system don’t graduate high school, less than 3% graduate college, more than 40% are homeless, in jail, or dead. Other statistics show that 70% of inmates have touched the foster care system, and that 80% of people on death row were one way or another exposed to the foster care system and last but not least: 60% of child trafficking victims have histories in foster care.

Back in 2017, famous actor Ashton Kutcher stood before Congress and delivered a speech on human trafficking, and he stated some of the information given above, but the thing that stood out the most to me was when he promised that the foster care system “is a breeding ground for sex trafficking” and when he stated, “it’s a sample set that we have pretty extraordinary data around to date even though we can’t seem to fix it…”

The children are this world’s future and this system is treating them extremely poorly to a point that they grow up to become the bad guys themselves because our system isn’t doing enough! In Ashton Kutcher’s speech he goes on to state,

“when people are left out and when people are neglected and not supported and they’re not given the love that they need to grow, it becomes an incubator for trafficking and this refugee crisis, if we want to be serious about ending slavery we can not ignore our support for this issue in that space otherwise slavery will be an issue for years to come. Once people are exposed to this type of abuse it’s a mental health issue at this point and there is not enough beds and there is not enough support, and we have to have the resources on their side otherwise the recidivism rates are through the roof. When Maslow’s hierarchy of needs aren’t met people resort to survival and if child sex trafficking and child sexual abuse is their means of survival and only source of ‘love’ that they can feel in their lives, that’s what they will go for.”

It’s all about the pipeline in and out and everyone knows that everything comes down to money, but we need to demand changes for our children and the future of children regardless of the cost! Everyone should be given the right to pursue happiness! TOO MANY young adults that aged out of the system were being thrown into the streets with no way to support themselves, no food or clothes, and no health insurance to get the medicine or counseling that they needed after being neglected by this system created to help them.

Because of the growing outcry for help, the government in 1999 created the John H. Chafee Care Independence Act. This act was created to assist young adults from ages 18-21, but get this: the act doesn’t mandate what the states must provide to those who aged out and that’s why to this day, as stated earlier, almost half of these young adults end up homeless, in jail, or dead. How is this system helping the future of our country when it does nothing to give these children any type of a fighting chance?!

Written by FULCRUM contributor Madison Martin