When we discuss the role of assistance services, it's easy to get snide and mock the fact that many services don't provide certain living skills to aid recipients. This is largely due to the myopic mindset of people who've never seen a world outside their own narrow vision.

First, let me establish firmly that I STILL believe that personal responsibility trumps all! When we're speaking about the kinds of services that organizations geared to help the poor and needy should provide, we're NOT talking about services they MUST FEEL OBLIGATED to provide. Big difference. And by "aid", I am, as usual, speaking of private charities, which I believe are far more effective and have far greater potential for outreach.

Those qualifiers out of the way, allow me to continue. Statistics show over 500,000 children in foster care in the US at any given time(Link ). Since reunification is the goal in only 44% of these cases(see previously posted link), this means 280,000+ US children that will grow up "in the system". And the system, ladies and gents, doesn't teach children the skills to live in the real world; it warehouses them. More than one third of US foster children will fail to obtain a high school diploma or GED, as compared to 10% of their peers. They are also more likely to become pregnant and unable to pay their living expenses(Link ). In short, foster children raised in the system are more likely to become part of the welfare society and a drain on our national resources.

So we as a society have choices: do we allow these throwaway children to become part of a welfare and/or criminal underclass, or do we make a difference and give them hope? The answer, I suppose, lies in your perspective.

It is not the duty of the government to be their nanny, to give them a future, or even a hope. That responsibility lies in the community, in the churches, and in the hearts and minds of people who are willing to "stand in the gap" for the families these children desperately needed, but all too often lacked. While it is easy to scoff because some poor bum doesn't know how to make up a box of Macaroni and Cheese, a skill my 7 year old has already mastered, we must allow for the possibility that their upbringing never gave them that experience.

When it comes to "throwaway children" in our society, I AM a "bleeding heart", in a sense. I am, however, a bleeding heart that realizes that no amount of government funding could ever hope to give the kind of relief and assistance that I can give simply by being a friend.