Should Obese Children Be Put in Foster Care?
In some cases, obese children should be removed from their homes, according to a group of child health specialists from England and Ireland.
If parents fail to provide medical treatment for a child with a chronic disease like asthma or epilepsy, government welfare officials can put the young patient in foster care. Should they do the same for children who are obese — and therefore at risk of developing lifelong complications such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes?
Full Los Angeles Times article on foster care for obese children here. See the paper published by the British Medical Journal online edition here.
The emotional scars from forcibly removing kids from their home would outweigh any health benefit of reduce calories. It also would not surprise me to discover the kids still put on excess weight even when removed from the parental home.
So, a bunch of caring public servants think that being overweight, which they get to define, is more damaging to a child than forcibly being taken away from his parents and housed in foster care?
Looks like the training required to become a “child health specialist” causes serious judgment deficits.
I was under the impression that living in a foster home was a really awful thing for a kid. It only makes life better when there is serious abuse going on in the child’s home.
The interesting question is: Is feeding your kid tons of food child abuse? If you look at what I ate as a kid, my mother probably could have been sent to prison for letting my consume such garbage. But, I wasn’t overweight. And I’m a heathly adult that has (mostly) stopped eating cheap food.
I’m of the opinion that farm subsidies play a huge role in making fast food to enticing. If we really want to make a difference, we should stop paying people to grow corn.
How about making the parents wear a scarlett CCA badge around their necks. That stands for Culinary Child Abuse.
Good thinking Neil.