Marianna- What IS the story?

    The story that I hope to tell should bring to light some of the issues that most people are unaware of and inspire them to take action to solve them.  The general public might be aware that there is an issue with the foster care system in Vermont but they will usually not know the whole story behind what is happening.  Another one of the audiences we might target is potential foster families.  The number of children in the system can not be fixed without a larger number of parents willing to take them in.  Of course these are just some of the audiences that we might target.

     Our documentary might begin with what could be considered a brief overview on how everything works within the system.  After this we might be able to give quick sections with different interview and photos, each focusing on a different layer of the system, such as the lack of social workers and foster parents, to the drug problem that is putting so many infants into foster care.  We could end it with telling our audience about what is being done already and what they could do to help.  However, I think that this is something that my group will discuss much more in-depth at our next meeting.  I can not wait to see how it actually unfolds.

    I think that a few of the changes that we could ask our audience to make is to maybe consider fostering kids.  There is a severe lack of people willing to foster children and without them nothing can be fixed. One of the things that people could do to help is to give more support to the social workers who give their entire lives to giving these kids the best possible future they can have.  Another thing that people could work together on is setting up drug and alcohol awareness workshops to help prevent teens and young adults from making the mistakes that will put their future or current kids into the system.  The last thing that pops into my head is trying to give families better access to treatment so that they can try to keep their kids safe.  That is one of the reasons we need more foster parents.  If we focused a little more on the parents care as well as the kids, there would be less of a need for people to take them in.
 
     The biggest  purpose I have for telling this story is the struggles that I have seen firsthand some of these kids go through, even years after having been in the system.  When this topic came up at our first meeting, I knew that it was what I wanted to do, so that I could try and help make a difference in more people lives.  At the start of this class I just wanted to change the inner working of the system, now I would like to get more kids into homes that actually care about them and their future.