Through the Belly of the Beast and Back: My Life in Foster Care

Foster care is a system designed to protect children, yet it is a system that often causes additional trauma and pain for the children involved. In Through the Belly of the Beast and Back, author and licensed master social worker Titania D. Grace examines today's system and shows how individual experiences can have lasting and harmful effects on the very population it was meant to protect. Drawing from her own experiences as a foster child and from the cases of many of the kids she has worked with, Grace paints a portrait of what it's like entering and growing up in foster care. She shows what happens when children are removed from their biological families and enter the foster care system in which one foster home is rarely the norm and where the homes they are placed aren't always the safest. Through the Belly of the Beast and Back discusses what needs to changed, but also offers recommendations in supporting changes that affect the foster children and their families and changes that promote healthier workers within the child welfare system. Grace offers an honest look into the current state of the child welfare system in order to raise awareness of the issues children face. She wants to provide children a chance at having a healthy childhood-one we would hope to give to our own children.