Word: fostering
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...past decade, as the foster-care population has soared, California and other states have contracted out more and more services for their poorest children. In theory, kids should be safer because private agencies have the flexibility and funding to deal better with children. In Los Angeles County, for example, state-licensed foster homes had 1 caseworker for every 70 kids. Private agencies routinely have 1 social worker dealing with only 12 to 15 kids. But the private agencies have presented a new set of problems...
Gilbreania Wallace, a two-year-old African-American girl, was a ward of the Grace Home for Waiting Children, a private foster-care agency in Los Angeles founded in 1992 by former and on-leave bureaucrats of California's department of children and family services, as well as members of its Black Employees Association. They set up the Grace Home, hoping a knowledgeable black staff might attract larger numbers of African-American foster parents and work more efficiently with them...
...director's replacement was no improvement. Although she promised a zeal for children, she also allegedly had a zeal to spend money. Even as children in the agency's care couldn't get dental exams and foster parents couldn't get first-aid training, Grace Home was spending $250,000 in foster-care funds to defend a sexual-harassment suit and gave an additional $130,000 to a board member. The books listed $6,725 in Toys "R" Us gift certificates with no receipt. The new director gave herself nearly $10,000 for a retroactive pay raise, car payments...
...brutal indifference has spread itself through the system," says Andrew Bridge, a former foster child in Los Angeles who went to Harvard Law School and now heads the Alliance for Children's Rights. He chaired a countywide panel that reviewed the state's foster-care record. Last January it concluded that the system in Los Angeles County operates with minimal data on its wards and a safety-monitoring process that is random at best. Some departments are not aware of what others are doing, so a child's safety often relies on guesswork. "Fundamentally," says Bridge, 34, "we've come...
...foster-care crisis is a many-headed behemoth, and no single weapon has been able to defeat it. "There are so many actors involved in the decision of what happens to the children," says Secretary Shalala. "Different people have responsibility for taking them away from their family. Another group of people is responsible for placing them." Last year the General Accounting Office issued a report on juvenile courts, finding that judges and caseworkers do not work well together. Many judges mistrust the judgment of caseworkers and order additional assessments "to compensate for what the judges perceive as professional inadequacies...