Word: fostering
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...costs at least $7 billion a year, or about $13,000 a child, to care for America's foster kids. The problem is not a single black hole but a series--each state affected with its own distinct problems. A yearlong investigation by TIME has found the crisis mounting in at least 20 states as lawyers file class actions asking judges to take control of entire agencies and Governors to appoint task forces to review child-welfare programs. Three states in particular--Georgia, Alabama and California--show the severity of the crisis...
Terrell Peterson was young and black, like 50% of the foster-care population. He was a victim of the crack epidemic that spawned not only a generation of addicts but also a generation of lost children, most of whom have found their way into the foster-care system. His mother was addicted to crack. He had two siblings with different fathers. The state opened eight files on his family in five years, and 21 different caseworkers from five offices were involved in the cases. Social workers, faithful to a policy trend of placing kids with family members, sent Terrell...
Then they apparently closed his case file and forgot about him. "Terrell Peterson should not have happened," says Georgia Governor Roy Barnes. Earlier this year, he ordered a sweeping criminal investigation into the suspicious deaths of Terrell and 12 other foster children around the state. The boy's foster grandmother, Pharina Peterson, has been charged with murder, along with his foster aunt Terri Lynn Peterson and her boyfriend, Calvin Pittman. The Georgia bureau of investigation has spent much of this year trying to determine whether the negligence of social workers made them accomplices in the children's deaths. Bureau agents...
...appalling as is Terrell's death, the fact is that Georgia took steps years ago to keep such a tragedy from happening. After the death of a little girl named Kathy Joe in 1997, Georgia lawmakers vowed reform. Panic over foster care produced regulations designed to save children's lives. Until Terrell's death, however, no one had checked to make sure the changes were enforced. "I am not here to defend this system," says Barnes, who this year pushed for a children's ombudsman and laws to increase caseworker accountability. "We have not made this a high enough priority...
...Governor Fob James, a wily if obtuse politician of the old school, adept at surviving by switching parties and baiting voters. In 1988, riding a tide of states' rights fervor, he appointed a friend, Martha Nachman, as welfare commissioner, with a mandate to ignore federal court-imposed guidelines on foster care. The mammoth state agency quickly deteriorated...