What do you think about the UK Banning smokers from Fostering?

aloha.girl59

Yes. I agree with him. Especially the part about the SS! Nice little play on an acronym there...

Fogging up your home with cigarette smoke is obviously unhealthy. I smoke, but I don't smoke inside. I also eat junk food and I don't exercise much. Good thing I didn't adopt my son from foster care in England, huh?

Gaia Raain

Does smoking make a person abusive? If so, then I spent 30 years of my life being an abusive person (12 years of which was not by choice - my parents smoked in the house, so I have had nicotine in my body since before birth). Suddenly, about a year and a half ago, I became fit to be a parent - because I quit smoking.

Makes no sense to me. I agree with Aloha. My concern is for the safety and well being of children. NO ONE provides a perfect home for a child. Everyone has their faults and their vices. Just because someone has a vice does not make them a bad person, or unfit to provide a child a home. Only if that vice leads to abuse or neglect does it interfere with providing a good home for a child.

Like I said yesterday, I quit because I wanted to be alive to parent my kids - not because I thought they'd die of badinfluenceitis.

ETA: To be clear, I do not support smoking in the house or car with kids. But because a person smokes (presumably they care enough about the kids' health to smoke outdoors), that does not make them a bad person or a bad parent.

maybe

Hmm, it's one thing to want children to live in a healthy environment, but another to exclude an entire group of foster parents based on a single characteristic.

Like aloha.girl, we all have behaviors that are imperfect and/or unhealthy (I just eat ate a big hunk of meat - does that make me incapable of providing a safe and loving home to a child?) Smoking, in and of itself, is in no way related to being unable to care for a child.

I'm generally opposed to those who wish to legislate a so-called "healthy lifestyle." Where does it end?

Also, the comparison of smoking to racial issues is invalid on its face. Apple and oranges.

Nurse Autumn Intactivist NFP

BRING ON THE THUMBS DOWN!!

I think that it is WAY more harmful to a child (assuming there is no asthma or other medical reason involved) to be in a group home or a bad foster home than in a home with good foster parents who happen to smoke. We are demonizing the wrong thing here people! While I agree that people SHOULD take it outside and keep it out of the car, If that is the worst they have to deal with, then I think we are coming along quite nicely.

Olivia J

I think it should really depend on the level of harm. There are so many children in need of foster parents as is. If foster parents smoke outside away from the children they shouldn't be excluded.

C Wood

Well, this should be the subject of a lot of arguments.

My personal opinion is that it's better for a child's health to be fostered by non-smokers. But I'm not sure it's something that should be legislated against. That's going a bit too far. What fosters need MOST is GOOD foster parents who love them and don't abuse them.
cw

Randy B

I've got a daughter who is restricted from going to certain friends homes because their parents smoke in the house. I see the reactions she has to the smoke and the effect on her asthma when she visits and we just had to put our foot down and say she couldn't visit. I agree, what the parents do in thier own home is their own business but I have a duty of care with my daughter and I won't let her visit.

That same duty of care is one that social services has with the children in their care and I have to agree with what the Brits have done as it, second hand smoke, has the great potential to negatively impact the children placed in those homes.

ETA

Having seen what the BBC commentator had to say I can see where it will have a great negative impact on the number of foster homes available for children who need them but hopefully they can weather that storm.

I'd like to think that some sort of formal restrictions could have worked too (ie: can't smoke indoors in your own home if you foster) but I have no clue how that would be enforced.

I also don't know the state of "children's homes" in the UK so thats another area I can't comment on either.

Jill_01

While I'll agree that second hand smoking is bad, I think it's much worse to be left in an orphanage when you can have a family.
And who is to say that the foster parents are smoking outside or in a designated room away from the children? I have family members who smoke and the majority do not smoke around children.

Crucio

Frankly I donâ€™t think one should smoke around any child. It would be nice if they could enforce what Randy recommend that they could only smoke outside but that really could not be enforced. I wonder if this will go anywhere in their court system because they are basically discriminating against people who smoke. If someone truly wants to be a foster parent I suppose they can kick the habit or at least try. Yes I know it can be hard to quite as I have several friends who are heavy smokers some who have tried to quit or at least smoke less. It can come down to what do they really want more to become foster parent or smoke.

The cold does not stop a true smoker I can remember when I was taking classes and it be like 40 degrees out and all the students huddle and bundled up outside , even some professors were the smokers. Illinois has become a smoke Free State in all public buildings people cant even smoke in bars. I know of a local bar that set up heaters on their patio. They had it featured on my local news there were about 50 people out there bundled up and smoking away.

opedial

This was a pretty big questions in SK and when we started fostering. This is hte problem though, they currently do NOT have enough homes, and their was just an outraged piece in the paper about how some childrens ahve to wait weeks in a 24 hour daycare or hotel to get a foster placement. There just is not enough foster homes to meet the children coming in.

Does this mean we shoudl provide them in unsafe homes? This is the question going back and forth. If you said to the foster parents "no smoking in your home" you may have 1/3 of them quit and then where do the children go.

What I think they came to was no smoking in homes with children under 2 or something like that. SK is also cold so always going outside does not work.

Their are similiar debates amount stipends and foster care fees. Some say we need to provide more funds to foster parents, but then the problem might be people getting into it for the wrong reason (economics)

Their are so many policy decisions that can backfire on them. To save a child second hand smoke may mean 20 other children may not have a foster placement.

I think when we are trying to fix these small problems is silos, we will never make any effective change. The entire system needs an overhaul, the first of which is working with families LONG BEFORE it becomes a crisis situation where they hvae to apprehend. Crisis management will only beget more problems, more stressed out social workers and foster parents, and the people who suffer hte most are the children.

IDK!!

I'm sorry, but smoking in a car or house with a child IS abuse. It's poison.

The adult should smoke away from the kids and wear a separate smock to keep the smell off of them. I'm with randy. I would not let my child (well, he has asthma) hang around a house where they smoke inside. My dad does and we go by his house 2x a year and hang out on the patio. He just had a heart attack and hasn't smoked since, we're pretty excited to be able to visit him in his new house, smoke free.

eta....how about this.....freakin' smoke outside. if you can't even do that for a child then you shouldn't have one...especially someone elses.

ohhwhenducksfly

theres been worse parents but i guess its a start. second hand smoke is awful

help me:http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081127115539AAWBNGC

Sophie

Yes.

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