Baltimore Child Welfare Director: Foster Care is a Bad Idea – Kids Belong in Families

Baltimore Child Welfare Director: Foster Care is a Bad Idea – Kids Belong in Families:

Rethinking Foster Care

So among the gifts that Albert Einstein left us was a definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. My work is an interesting example – child welfare. It’s the government business of protecting children. The primary intervention is to take kids from their parents and put them into foster care, and there’s a prevailing belief that this is the responsible thing to do for children who are abused and neglected.

Now, there are 50 child welfare agencies in the country, and the funds to underwrite them are in the billions.

There is not one among them that’s reputed to be working well.