Word: fostering
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...such a local issue that they pass down the decision making to individual counties. The result has been unwieldy systems that are grossly mismanaged. Fearing that they may create bloated bureaucracies, the states usually earmark the money for the direct care of kids, meaning monthly payments to foster parents and salaries for social workers. In so doing, they neglect the infrastructure. There are not enough computers, secretaries and clerks to do the cheap paper work that consumes social workers' time. There are not enough administrators to review the cases or think outside the box about creative solutions. "We've grown...
...there is no flexibility because the system is stretched to its limit. Some agencies have become so desperate to place children that any bed will do. Kids are being sent to foster homes with no forethought, and the states cannot guarantee their safety. Furthermore, the number of kids needing foster care is exceeding the number of families available to care for them. Even the most devoted of foster parents are dropping out of the programs, frustrated at times by a lack of support--as well as legal roadblocks to adopting the children if they so choose...
...years ago, the House Select Committee on Children blamed "weak federal oversight" for the "extraordinary failings" of the foster-care system. It has taken the better part of a decade to finalize the monitoring rules that will guide the states in implementing all the new laws that have followed. Shalala, talking about the long wait, says, "We were not after the quick political hit here. This is not a spin operation. This is a very sophisticated, thoughtful set of regulations that are realistic for the states." Her department, nevertheless, missed congressional deadlines to revamp the child welfare-monitoring system...
Despite everything, people have managed to emerge from the foster-care system to become pillars of society. In January a 23-month-old girl in Washington was beaten to death after a judge remanded her, despite inadequate paper work, to her mother's care. The case so affected Washington's reformist mayor, Anthony Williams, that he broke from his prepared text in his State of the District speech in March to reflect on his own life in foster care in California, where he lived untended, given up to a life of supposed mental retardation until he was adopted...
...Homer and his brother from drug-induced squalor and neglect. Instead of entering the realm of Ninja Turtles and Popsicles, however, Homer went through a childhood of dependency-court hearings, social workers and frayed relationships. Nobody preserved his family unit. For the past 15 years he has been in foster care...