A Critical Look At The Foster Care

System Essay, Research Paper

A Critical Expression At The Foster Care System

The Group Homes

BY

Juvenile Justice

May 26, 1999

THE GROUP HOMES

Overview

Children come ining the shady universe of surrogate attention are frequently assigned labels randomly and on a bed-available footing. They may stop up passing some clip in conventional surrogate places, merely to happen themselves shuffled through group places, residential intervention installations, mental infirmaries and prisons. Light attending is given to the demands of these kids, and the conditions they are forced to digest are frequently far worse than those endured by captives in some 3rd universe states.

THE LABELING OF CHILDREN

Kenneth Wooden, Executive Director of the National Coalition for Children & # 8217 ; s Justice, explained to a Congressional Subcommittee that there is small difference in the background and features of kids in attention regardless of whether they have been labeled & # 8220 ; dependant, & # 8221 ; & # 8220 ; neglected, & # 8221 ; & # 8220 ; position wrongdoer, & # 8221 ; & # 8220 ; CHINS & # 8221 ; ( Children in Need of Supervision ) , or & # 8220 ; emotionally disturbed. & # 8221 ; It was Wooden & # 8217 ; s feeling that a & # 8220 ; shell game & # 8221 ; was being played with the labeling procedure, with dependent kids, relabeled as & # 8220 ; disturbed & # 8221 ; or & # 8220 ; difficult to put & # 8221 ; being shuttled off to private, frequently profit-making establishments in of all time greater Numberss. As a consequence:

Alternatively of orphanhoods, we now have alleged & # 8220 ; intervention centres & # 8221 ; & # 8211 ; a & # 8220 ; growing industry & # 8221 ; which feeds on unwanted kids merely as the nursing place concern depends for its being on big Numberss of the unwanted aged. And, as is the instance with the aged, the systematic disregard and ill-treatment of kids in these installations is being subsidized by the federal authorities.

In Virginia, former Governor Douglas Wilder discovered the same labeling procedure to be in usage, happening that & # 8220 ; kids frequently bounce from bureau to bureau, from surrogate to group place to establishment, and from funding watercourse to funding stream. & # 8221 ; Wilder explained: & # 8220 ; They are frequently defined by the system whose door they happen to come in: a public assistance kid if he comes through that door ; a juvenile justness kid if he happens to come through that system ; a school system kid ; or a mental wellness child. & # 8221 ; Once that label is attached, nevertheless, the support watercourse may go on to flux, even after a kid leaves one system for another. The former Governor testified that when the names of 14,000 kids across four bureaus were examined, they turned out to be 4,933 kids. [ 1 ] Some kids are labeled & # 8220 ; dependent & # 8221 ; or & # 8220 ; neglected & # 8221 ; and are placed under the legal power of the Department of Social Services, other kids are labeled & # 8220 ; delinquent & # 8221 ; and are under the Juvenile Court or Probation Department, still others are given a psychiatric label and sent to the Department of Mental Health, explained Mark Soler, Executive Director of the Youth Law Center, to a Congressional Subcommittee some old ages subsequently. The label slapped on the kid may good depend on his point of entry into the juvenile justness system, harmonizing to Soler. & # 8220 ; Indeed, the same kid may acquire different labels at different times, depending upon the point at which he enters the system. In world all of these kids may hold serious emotional jobs, and all surely come from households or other life state of affairss marked by acute crises, & # 8221 ; he explained. Whether it is in a group place, congregate attention installation, mental infirmary, detainment centre or prison, surrogate wards of the province frequently are forced to digest the really worst of conditions.

Among the conditions the Youth Law Center identified were kids in an Arizona juvenile detainment centre tied manus and pes to their beds ; a Washington State installation in which two kids were held for yearss at a clip in a cell with merely 25 square pess of floor infinite ; kids hogtied in State juvenile preparation schools in Florida & # 8212 ; carpuss handcuffed, mortise joints handcuffed, so placed stomach down on the floor, and carpuss and mortise joints joined together behind their dorsums. In the preparation school in Oregon kids were put in filthy, roach-infested isolation cells for hebdomads at a clip. In the Idaho preparation school, kids were punished by being put in sound jackets, and being hung, upside down, by their mortise joints. [ 2 ]

Children continue to be assigned labels randomly, and frequently on a bed-available footing.

A recent South Carolina audit reveals that a per centum of Foster attention wards have been labeled as in demand of curative arrangements because of a deficit of conventional surrogate places. Hearers noted that many of these kids will bear the stigma of holding been labeled as holding emotional jobs for the remainder of their lives. [ 3 ]

THE GROUP HOMES

Kenneth Wooden visited over 150 juvenile installations over a three twelvemonth period during the 1970s. His findings led to the formation of the National Coalition for Children & # 8217 ; s Justice.

& # 8220 ; Basically, they are called & # 8216 ; youth places & # 8217 ; or & # 8216 ; spreads & # 8217 ; with fancy names like Cinderella Hall or Pleasant Valley or Happy Days, & # 8221 ; he explained to a Congressional subcommittee.

& # 8220 ; They have fancy booklets with swimming pools and stocked fishing pools and tennis tribunals and the warrant of the presence of full-time professional medical staff, & # 8221 ; he explained. There are no existent exposure of tennis tribunals or swimming pools, instead they display drawings. & # 8220 ; And, when you go at that place, they do non be. Or else a stocked fishing pool is a mud pool, & # 8221 ; said Wooden. & # 8220 ; The response suites for parents and State functionaries responsible for delegating kids hold impressive architectural renditions of planned new installations, most of which ne’er manage to acquire constructed, most of which are faded by the Sun over the old ages, & # 8221 ; he said. In other words, it was all a expansive frontage intended to court both parents and legislators. [ 4 ] In his book on the child-welfare system, & # 8220 ; The Kid Business, & # 8221 ; Ronald B. Taylor wrote in 1981 of profiteering by California group-home managers:

Several non-profit-making corporations runing child-care installations were found to be lawfully planing big sums of authorities money through lease-back agreements. Operators non merely owned the land and leased it to the non-profit-making corporation ; they frequently paid themselves fine-looking wages and had the free usage of places, autos and recognition cards.

The degree of attention and intervention in far excessively many of these group places was minimum at best, because the money was being skimmed off for personal addition. [ 5 ]

& # 8220 ; In the 1970s, existent estate speculators bought up full business district blocks, & # 8221 ; write John Hubner and Jill Wolfson. & # 8220 ; After a few coats of pigment and some drywall were slapped up, the houses were given bucolic- or inspirational-sounding names like & # 8216 ; Green Pastures & # 8217 ; or & # 8216 ; Excell Center & # 8217 ; and found new life as group homes. & # 8221 ;

The new industry attracted many operators who saw it as a manner to exert power, and many applied their ain alone trade name of & # 8220 ; behavior alteration & # 8221 ; therapy, which included anything from smacks across the face to long periods of isolation, and, in one recorded instance, the electronic stinging of autistic kids with a cattle goad.

Social workers frequently turned a unsighted oculus to these maltreatments, Hubner and Wolfson explain: & # 8220 ; Child public assistance workers, some incompetent, all overwhelmed, were frequently under such force per unit area to happen bed infinite that they looked the other way. & # 8221 ; A typical narrative involved a corporation that bought and opened group places. After runing for one twelvemonth, the corporation folded the places without notice, and sold the existent estate. The corporation turned out to be a silent person set up by four work forces running the places. Money that was earmarked for services was alternatively being used to pay off the mortgages. The spouses sold the existent estate for a net income and vanished. [ 6 ]

By the 1990s, California & # 8217 ; s group place operators would go much more sophisticated in pull offing their fiscal personal businesss. A province probe of Ron Mayuiers, a long-run group place supplier, charged that Mayuiers received more than $ 2 million in authorities Foster attention payments to which he was non entitled for the operation of his California Crest group places.

The California Crest places received a top support rate, more than $ 50,000 per twelvemonth per kid, for which they were expected to supply thorough, professional, day-and-night attention for striplings. The audit, crossing the old ages 1990 through 1994, found that Mayuiers paid himself one-year wages runing from $ 101,501 to $ 144,000, far transcending the allowable upper limit for group place managers. It besides describes a profitable & # 8220 ; pay-back & # 8221 ; agreement, in which Mayuiers and his married woman set up a separate corporation to buy houses with surrogate attention financess. The houses were in bend leased back to the group place at inordinate rents.

Beginnings in the Department of Social Services told Union-Tribune newsmans that the province may travel after the households assets, including a $ 1.6 million house in Fairbanks Ranch. Mayuiers besides reportedly enjoyed frequent eating house repasts, and drove a Mercedes Benz. While one would conceive of that a adult male who enjoys such an deluxe life style could good afford to be generous to the kids in his attention, a separate licensing probe charged that Mayuiers kept the group places on meager budgets, neglecting to supply kids with equal nutrient, books and school supplies or supplies for day-to-day hygiene. Among the other jobs identified by research workers were several cases in which kids in the attention of California Crest were mistreated or left unsupervised ; a female staff member holding had sex with a male child at the Ivy House group place legion times ; a self-destructive miss given bottles of pills by a staff member and later trying self-destruction ; a miss holding been molested at a coach halt after a staff member failed to pick her up every bit scheduled.

State inspectors from the San Diego community attention licencing office had routinely found wellness and safety misdemeanors at the group places, including rodent dungs in the kitchen, bugs in a cereal bag and repasts that failed to run into nutritionary criterions, but its operating licences were ne’er suspended or revoked.

A longtime Foster attention licencing functionary, talking to newsmans on the status of confidentiality, maintained that the group place system is still tainted by suppliers who enrich themselves and by regulators incapable of halting them. & # 8220 ; It & # 8217 ; s a barrel with a batch of icky apples. The degree of greed hasn & # 8217 ; t changed. & # 8221 ; He said operators still employ a assortment of cash-skimming methods, from dearly-won lease-backs to overstating or distorting certificates of staff members to obtain a higher rate of support. [ 7 ] & # 8220 ; The great bulk of group place arrangements in California garbage to accept referrals unless they are assured that kids will be placed for at least 1 twelvemonth, & # 8221 ; harmonizing to California probation officer Dennis Lepak.

& # 8220 ; This seems to be an industry standard. & # 8221 ; Children are placed for unsuitably long and randomly determined periods of clip. Small or no work is done to return kids to their households. Most plans consider place visits to be a privilege, and visits are used as wagess for good behaviour instead than as reunion tools. & # 8220 ; I have seen Christmas place visits for immature kids cancelled for misdemeanor of comparatively minor internal plan regulations, & # 8221 ; Lepak explained. [ 8 ] In Pennsylvania, Julie was removed from her parents by the Northampton County Children and Youth Agency, and set in a sequence of establishments, including surrogate places and group places. As is the instance with most remotions, there were no allegations of maltreatment. Rather, the bureau had learned of her hooky and some minor household jobs.

& # 8220 ; I have a inquiry, & # 8221 ; she said. & # 8220 ; How come it & # 8217 ; s incorrect if a parent spanks a kid, but in a group place they have permission to slap a child? & # 8221 ; Julie told The Morning Call of beefy male staff members utilizing disgusting linguistic communication and roughing up misss less than half their size. One incident involved her roomie. & # 8220 ; They put her in a clasp so bad she had rug Burnss on her face. They restrain you a snake pit of a batch worse than anything your parents can make, but if your parents do it, it & # 8217 ; s abuse. & # 8221 ;

The promise of traveling place, Julie said, is used as an inducement to acquire childs to play ball with the system, and the regulations are manipulative. & # 8220 ; They try to maintain you in the system. & # 8221 ; One twelvemonth, Julie ran off to be with her parents for Christmas. & # 8220 ; That was the first Christmas I spent with my parents in two old ages. You know how you & # 8217 ; re a small child and you get to open your nowadayss and all that? That was the first clip in over two old ages I was able to make that. & # 8221 ;

But Northampton County social worker Maureen Munley was barely filled with Christmas cheer. She filed a contempt request against the household, desiring to set them in gaol for something kindred to harbouring a runaway.

Northampton County Judge William Moran had to throw out the request because it was lawfully absurd, but he warned the parents that if Julie showed up at their place once more, they were instantly to name the Department. [ 9 ] Such contempt for the demands of kids and households permeates the system. The mean length of stay at Mooseheart, run by the Loyal Order of Moose and financed largely through charity, is six old ages. The establishment houses over 200 kids, from babyhood to age 18, in 24 houses. Mooseheart, where all arrangements are made on a & # 8220 ; voluntary & # 8221 ; footing, will give a kid back to his or her biological parents or legal defenders on petition, thank you really much. But Rose Haggerty, its manager of pupil services, provinces steadfastly, & # 8220 ; We don & # 8217 ; t seek to reunite households. We don & # 8217 ; t intend to assume biological science, but we promote the thought that the kid is turning here. & # 8221 ;

& # 8220 ; Whatever the maltreatments in Foster attention & # 8211 ; and there are many & # 8211 ; there is perfectly no ground to believe that equal, if non worse, abuse won & # 8217 ; t occur behind the walls, & # 8221 ; said David Rothman, a professor of societal medical specialty at Columbia in mention to the inquiry of spread outing congregate attention to house more kids. & # 8220 ; The difference will be that cipher will hear the screams. & # 8221 ;

Even at highly-regarded establishments such as Mooseheart, four house parents were arrested and convicted of sexually molesting about a twelve kids between 1988 and 1992.

Recalls Kenyetta Ivy, who found herself shuffled through nine New York group places: & # 8220 ; There were rats in the range. I know some misss who tried to perpetrate self-destruction, and the staff wouldn & # 8217 ; t even look into on them. & # 8221 ; [ 10 ]

Not even the highly-regarded Boys Town can protect itself against the infiltration of those who would take advantage of their wards. In Orlando, Florida, a Boys Town & # 8220 ; occupant instructor & # 8221 ; found himself charged for holding had sexual dealingss with one of the misss in his attention. [ 11 ] Just how bad do conditions hold to be before person stairss in to close a installation down? When former constabularies officer-turned voluntary Pat Hanges foremost arrived at the Montrose installation in Baltimore, Maryland, she found grounds of disregard everyplace. On her first assignment at Sanford Cottage she found it missing in staff, furniture, and recreational equipment. & # 8220 ; The lone thing Sanford had was a super-abundance of childs, & # 8221 ; she told a Congressional Subcommittee

. Each crowded small cell was filled with two kids. Many of the mattresses smelled of piss. Children were kiping on mattresses in halls and in the secondary school. “Six kids were crammed into a little country in Sanford bungalow ; in add-on to all this crowding, the air in there was so stale and so atrocious. The male childs were coming to me describing sexual maltreatment, and alleged sexual progresss were increasing. Along with attempted self-destructions, ” she explained. Children were literally told by staff when to sit and stand, and when they could travel to the bathroom. Toothpaste was dispensed onto their toothbrush, and they had to inquire staff for lavatory paper. Some staff members were verbally opprobrious and intimidating. The kids were non allowed to name place. And when kids would perpetrate a minor misdemeanor, they were locked in isolation in the “pink room.”

& # 8220 ; It was a room where, even after a kid had hung himself, could non perchance be supervised, all the manner down the terminal of the hall, smelled of piss and fecal matters so bad that I had to keep my breath when I went into it, in the summer months, & # 8221 ; she testified.

The former constabulary officer explained: & # 8220 ; I went to societal services and asked that a neglect study be made against the State of Maryland, because when I was a bull, if parents treated their childs the manner our State treated those childs, I would hold locked their butts up. & # 8221 ; [ 12 ]

The JDM Residential Treatment Center near St. Louis seemed like a fantastic topographic point to direct abused kids from troubled places. It offered 120 privy estates on which they could angle, hiking and larn about nature. Two physicians were among its laminitiss, and a professional counsellor was to be in charge. The intervention plan called for extended usage of favored therapy, group guidance and structured recreational activities. A church operated the centre.

So, the Missouri Division of Family Services started directing kids at that place, at a cost of $ 1,420 a month per kid. Soon thenceforth, province research workers substantiated three incidents of kid maltreatment at the place, two of them serious. The place had gone through six executive managers in one twelvemonth ; failed 175 out of 234 checkpoints during an review ; the larder was sometimes au naturel, with kids holding to fend for themselves. One winter the thermoregulator was kept at 55 grades. & # 8220 ; Cipher else at that place cared about them, & # 8221 ; said Brenda Woods, one of the former managers. & # 8220 ; They wouldn & # 8217 ; t even give them a ball to flip around. There were yearss when they didn & # 8217 ; Ts have any nutrient. The whole thing was merely a manner to do money off the state. & # 8221 ;

Pat Adams, who as a accredited counsellor visited the installation hebdomadally to advocate kids under a contract with the province stopped traveling because she was concerned about her safety and that of the kids she was reding. & # 8220 ; The topographic point was a gag, an absolute gag. It was merely set up to acquire province money, & # 8221 ; said Adams. Like Montrose, the installation was eventually shut down. [ 13 ]

Staffing continues to be a job in these installations. Many group place proprietors pay minimal pay, or somewhat above, and turnover remains high, merely as it does in the remainder of the kid public assistance industry. An informal survey conducted by the Northwestern Children and Family Justice Center found that most of the in private staffed residential group place establishments in Illinois had rotating staffs who were non houseparents populating with kids, but squads that came and went. Staff turnover was high, with the mean clip worked at the sites being between 1 1/2 to 2 old ages. Notes author Renny Golden: & # 8220 ; Not much confidant, lovingness, consistent nurturance is traveling on in these settings. & # 8221 ; [ 14 ]

& # 8220 ; I will state you I have ne’er, of all time, of all time, been afraid of one of my clients. But I have been afraid to travel into some of those installations at dark and trade with the dark staff entirely. It is scaring. It is perfectly awful, & # 8221 ; explained District of Columbia Bar Association Attorney Diane Weinroth to a Congressional subcommittee.

& # 8220 ; They have got some really unusual people working in these installations. I don & # 8217 ; T know where they come from. But I will state you this. There are no criterions for hiring. & # 8221 ; [ 15 ]

Apparently, many societal workers continue to turn a blind oculus to jobs in the group places & # 8211 ; basically disregarding kid maltreatment in their ain installations. Yaroslavsky said some of the defects identified by the expansive jury should be apparent to county societal workers, who typically visit surrogate kids one time a month. & # 8221 ; With some things, you walk in the door and you know there is a job, & # 8221 ; he said. & # 8220 ; We are non acquiring the sort of feedback from the societal worker trials that we should be, to protect the public assistance of the kids. & # 8221 ; [ 16 ] The Los Angeles County Grand Jury determined that money is & # 8220 ; non expended in conformity with federal, province, and local Torahs and regulations. & # 8221 ; Audits displayed & # 8220 ; important fiscal maltreatments and illegal and inappropriate utilizations of Foster attention financess in many of the places audited. & # 8221 ;

As for the life conditions, the jury found that: kids were unsuitably being sedated with psychoactive medicines ; kids were denied promised wagess for good behaviour based on a point system ; when group place proprietors did non desire to supply transit for after school activities, they merely refused to allow the kid participate ; many group places did non supply tutoring, yet punished the kids when they got hapless classs.

The expansive jury besides found that & # 8220 ; some group place proprietors use inappropriate subject steps such as dragging kids across the floor, throwing places at them, slapping or hitting a kid ; others make kids stand in a corner for hours at a time. & # 8221 ; But the group place proprietors are non the lone 1s who enrich themselves at the disbursal of kids. The expansive jury found a therapist holding written the same remark for each of the six kids at one group place. Some healers were non seeing the kids at all, or passing merely five to ten proceedingss with them, while charging for a full 45 proceedingss, the jury found.

The jury was peculiarly disturbed by the response of one healer, who told them during an review: & # 8220 ; You evidently don & # 8217 ; t understand anything about kids and therapy. Children do non of all time want to speak to a healer, so I asked the group place proprietors how the kids are doing. & # 8221 ;

But the vaulting horse has to halt someplace, and in the concluding analysis the incrimination rests non so much with those timeserving group place proprietors and healers who soak the system for all its worth, as it does with section caput Peter Digre and his control over the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services. A budget of about one one-fourth of a billion dollars is expended yearly on group place and Foster attention services in Los Angeles County, and group places have become a regular growing industry under his bid, leaping more than 250 per centum between 1990 and 1995 & # 8211 ; five times the rate of the remainder of California. [ 17 ]

Digre points the finger of incrimination at cutbacks in AFDC benefits as responsible for increasing surrogate arrangements, holding explained to newsmans: & # 8220 ; Families get caught in a downward spiral: first their public-service corporations are cut off so they can & # 8217 ; t maintain the babe bottles cold. Then they get behind in rent and move in with friend or relations who may hold a condemnable history. & # 8221 ; [ 18 ]

Under oppugning by a Congressional subcommittee, Digre admitted to legislators that about half of the remotions of kids from their places are due to poverty, and non mistreat.

& # 8220 ; It gets down to those really specific issues about a topographic point to populate, nutrient on the tabular array, medical attention, and thing like that, & # 8221 ; he explained, adding that & # 8220 ; about half of the households are non physical maltreaters, non sexual maltreaters, non people with leanings to violence but merely people who are fighting to maintain terminals pulled together and are eminently salvagable. & # 8221 ;

All of this was excessively much for a defeated Congressman Herger, who replied: & # 8220 ; Obviously, it is your section & # 8217 ; s pattern to take kids from households in approximately 50 per centum of the instances because they don & # 8217 ; Ts have adequate money. & # 8221 ; [ 19 ] While Digre has ever been speedy to fault cutbacks in support, while playing something of a shell game with statistics, the Los Angeles Grand Jury notes that & # 8220 ; the Foster attention caseload has been steadily increasing since 1990, two old ages before the first upper limit assistance payment reduction. & # 8221 ; How does his section & # 8220 ; help & # 8221 ; those people who are caught in this economic downward spiral? By taking 26,947 kids from their places in one recent twelvemonth & # 8211 ; a figure stand foring merely the first clip entrants into surrogate attention. And, as the Grand Jury study makes clear, the predicament of kids is frequently none the better in province attention, as they are frequently denied basic necessities & # 8211 ; the deficiency of which apparently led to their arrangement to get down with. About half of the group places the expansive jury visited had no mention books, educational plaything or games. About half the places had furniture with losing shortss, discolorations on the rugs, walls with holes and bathrooms without toilet paper. One site didn & # 8217 ; t even supply toothpaste to the kids. But instead than help a household with a rent verifier or public-service corporation sedimentation, the cost of which may be every bit small as a few hundred dollars, the Department will pass between $ 8,000 to $ 10,000 per month to shelter one kid at MacLaren Children & # 8217 ; s Center. Rather than help with lodging or day care, it will pass a one-fourth of a billion dollars to house hapless kids in unsafe Foster places, and in the metropolis & # 8217 ; s 700 group places. [ 20 ] With the improbably high figure of kids removed from their places, tribunal inadvertence is about impossible. A recent probe by the California State Auditor reveals that the Los Angeles juvenile tribunal follows the recommendations of DCFS is 98 per centum of the instances it hears & # 8211 ; efficaciously moving a rubberstamp for the Department. Even if the rare justice were inclined to supply some closer examination to the Department & # 8217 ; s claims, it would be about impossible, as the cumulative caseload of the Los Angeles juvenile tribunal consisted of 153,700 hearings in 1995, and 96,100 hearings during the first seven hebdomads of 1996. [ 21 ]

Throughout the state, kids continue to come in the system through different doors & # 8211 ; each bearing a different label & # 8211 ; happening themselves dumped in arrangement one with another an a bed-available footing.

THE IMPACT ON THE CHILDREN

The impact of life in residential group places is psychologically devasting, suggests a new survey. Adolescents populating with surrogate parents or in group places have more than four times the rate of serious psychiatric upsets than those populating with their ain households.

& # 8220 ; One of the most important findings was that a figure of striplings were enduring from terrible, potentially treatable, psychiatric upsets which had gone undetected, & # 8221 ; wrote research workers in the December, 1996, issue of the British Medical Journal.

Harmonizing to the survey, non merely did the teens in outside attention suffer from serious psychiatric upsets & # 8212 ; notably major depression & # 8212 ; they were besides more likely to hold behavior upsets, anxiousness jobs, attention-deficit upset, and unspecified psychoses.

Of 88 teens studied, aged 13 to 17 old ages, populating in surrogate or group residential scenes, the rate of psychiatric upsets was 67 % , compared with 15 % in those life at place. The differences between & # 8220 ; conventional & # 8221 ; surrogate places and residential attention are every bit marked. Such perturbations were identified in 57 % of those in surrogate attention, and in 96 % of those in residential attention. [ 22 ]

Mention:

1. Testimony of Douglas L. Wilder, Close to place: & # 8220 ; Community-based Mental Health Services for Children, & # 8221 ; , hearing, Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families, U.S. House of Representatives, April 29, 1991. p. 15.

2. Testimony of Mark Soler, Children in State Care: Guaranting Their Protection and Support, hearing, Committee on Children, Youth and Families, U.S. House of Representatives, September 25, 1986.

3. South Carolina Legislative Audit Council, Report to the General Assembly: Selected Issues in Foster Care, Audit, Reference: LAC/94-2, Chapter 2. January, 1995 Index.

4. Testimony of Kenneth Wooden.

5. Uri Berliner, & # 8220 ; Mining Riches from Troubled Kids, & # 8221 ; San Diego Union-Tribune, ( June 5, 1994 ) .

6. John Hubner and Jill Wolfson, Somebody Else & # 8217 ; s Children: The Courts, the Kids, And the Struggle to Save America & # 8217 ; s Troubled Families, ( New York: Crown, 1996 ) . p. 213

7. Uri Berliner, & # 8220 ; Care Group is Overpaid, State Finds & # 8211 ; California Crest Homes & # 8217 ; Excess Put at $ 2 Million, & # 8221 ; San Diego Union-Tribune, ( March 30, 1995 ) ; Uri Berliner, & # 8220 ; Mining Riches from Troubled Kids, & # 8221 ; San Diego Union-Tribune, ( June 5, 1994 ) ; Uri Berliner, & # 8220 ; Board Set to Ask for Investigation of Group Homes, & # 8221 ; San Diego Union-Tribune, ( June 15, 1994 ) .

8. Testimony of Dennis Lepak, Foster Care, Child Welfare, and Adoption Reforms, Joint Hearings before the Subcommittee on Public Assistance and Unemployment Compensation of the Committee on Ways and Means and the Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families, U.S. House of Representatives, April 13 and 28, May 12, 1988.

9. Paul Carpenter, & # 8220 ; They Prefer the Girl to be On the Lam, & # 8221 ; The Morning Call, ( February 27, 1996 ) .

10. David Van Biema, & # 8220 ; The Storm Over Orphanages, & # 8221 ; TIME Magazine, 144 ( December 12, 1994 ) .

11. Associated Press, & # 8220 ; Boys Town Supervisor Charged With Sexual Battery of Girl, & # 8221 ; as reported in Naples Daily News, ( October 12, 1997 ) .

12. Testimony of Pat Hanges, Children in State Care: Guaranting Their Protection and Support, hearing, Committee on Children, Youth and Families, U.S. House of Representatives, September 25, 1986.

13. Martha Shirk, & # 8220 ; Idyllic Setting Masks Child Abuse, Neglect, & # 8221 ; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, ( October 3, 1993

14. Renny Golden, Disposable Children: America & # 8217 ; s Child Welfare System, ( Belmont, Ca. : Wadsworth Printing Company, 1997 ) p. 135.

15. Testimony of Diane Weinroth, Foster Care: Problems and Issues, hearing, Subcommittee on Select Education of the Committee on Education and Labor, U.S. House of Representatives, September 8, 1976.

16. James Rainey, & # 8220 ; Reforms Called for in Group Homes, & # 8221 ; Los Angeles Times, ( April 10, 1997 ) .

17. 1996-1997 Los Angeles County Grand Jury, Juvenile Services Committee, Final Report, Early Release # 3, March 1997.

18. Margot Hornblower, & # 8220 ; Repairing the System, & # 8221 ; TIME Magazine, ( December 11, 1995 ) .

19. Testimony of Peter Digre, President Clinton & # 8217 ; s Budget Proposal For New Funding for Child Welfare Services Targeted for Family Support and Preservation Services, hearing, Subcommittee on Human Resources, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives, April 21, 1993. pp. 87 & # 8211 ; 88.

20. Los Angeles County Grand Jury. See note 18.

21. California State Auditor, Bureau of State Audits, Los Angeles County: The Department of Children and Family Services Can Improve Its Processes To Protect Children From Abuse and Neglect, October 1996.

22. Reuters, & # 8220 ; Teens In Public Care More Troubled, & # 8221 ; ( December 13, 1996 ) .