More volunteers are needed to take in teenage victims of rape and household violence, the Taiwan Fund for Children and Families’ Pingtung County branch said, calling on the public to help it take care of troubled adolescents.
Recent statistics compiled by the group show that the number of foster families in the Pingtung area hit a new low over the past five years.
Though 29 families volunteered to take in victims of rape or domestic violence during this period, another 27 opted out of the foster family program, making the net total of new foster homes a paltry two and bringing the total number to 57.
More than 30 percent of foster families in the region have at least a decade of experience in caring for abused teenagers, the group said, adding that there are 70 teenagers currently in the foster care program.
The group said that in addition to there being fewer people signing up to be foster parents, few of the families who do join the program are willing to take in teenagers.
Of the families that signed on with the program in the past five years, 63 percent are only willing to take in foster children who are seven years old or younger, and 29 percent are only willing to take in elementary-school kids, the fund said. None of the new foster families want to take care of anyone in junior-high school.
The group said that 47 percent of the wards it has under its protection are older than seven and of these, 23 percent are in junior-high school.
Wu Li-hsueh (吳麗雪), head of the Pingtung County Government’s Social Affairs Department, said the county government has to relocate about 200 children annually, at a cost of about NT$50 million (US$1.6 million).
Wu said that the high cost and demand mean that the county government is only able to house about half of the children who need protection, and called for families that are capable of taking care of such children to step up and help the county government.
The group is planning to hold a meeting to promote the foster program on June 22.
“We are inviting couples between the ages of 30 and 55 who have been married for at least three years, and one of which has a stable job, to inquire about joining the program,” personnel at the branch said, adding that having experience raising children was an additional asset.
One couple who are foster parents spoke about their experiences in the hope of encouraging more families to do the same.
Huang Nan-yi (黃楠益) and his wife, Chou Wen-ping (周文萍), have taken in five teenage girls during the five years that they have been in the program, each with different problems ranging from theft to violent behavior.
“Although we had taken them in, they were always very wary of us initially,” Chou said.
Recounting their experience with first girl they took in, Chou said the adolescent had been abandoned when she was two years old and had been through the trauma of failed adoption attempts. This miserable childhood had made the girl very distrusting and left her with a bad temper, Chou said.
“We told her repeatedly that she had to remain calm if she wanted to resolve a problem and that throwing tantrums would not solve anything,” Chou said, adding that during the year she stayed at the couple’s home, she became a different person.
“She became much more confident and was eventually adopted by a couple in the US,” Chou said.
“We tried to respect all the kids we took in and see the world from their point of view,” the couple said, adding that they had watched “all of the girls we fostered change drastically for the better, and one of them even won second place at the National Competition of Sports and Athletics.”
Chou said that when a situation with their foster child arose that they did not know how to handle, they just approached it calmly and refrained from being judgemental or critical.
Citing another girl they had taken in as an example, Chou said that although the girl was excessively promiscuous, they were accepting of the girl’s choices and instead of punishing her, taught her how to stay safe, be healthy and distinguish between what was appropriate behavior and what was not.
“We also tried to get her involved in activities that would focus her attention constructively,” Chou said.
Huang said he was grateful that his wife and two daughters had supported his decision to sign the family up for the foster program, adding that the family had benefited from the experience.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,