“ In our "child protection system," children are five
times more likely to die from physical abuse and 11 times more likely
to be sexually abused than in their own homes, Child Protective Services
Watch tells us. The organization also reports that, on average, a foster
child will spend at least three years in the system and live in three
different homes during their stay in foster care. ”
—
“ [...] we are spending nearly $100 billion dollars annually on
direct and indirect costs associated with child maltreatment and we
end up with a system that often appears worse than leaving children
in the homes we considered unfit.
“Part of the reason so many children end up in this broken system
is due to the way that the federal government pays for child-welfare
services at the state and county levels; these local governments earn
more federal money by having more children in the system. Technically
this is called a "perverse incentive." State and county governments
receive open-ended funding from the federal government for children
who are in the Child Welfare System, while they only get limited funds
to provide services that might eliminate the need for some children
to be in this system in the first place. Linda Wallace Pate, a veteran
attorney in foster cases, justly states that "it's scandalous that
the California foster care system has been reduced to a 'kids for cash'
system.”
Note that the USA is not the only country to have a continuing poor record
for their state-run child ‘welfare’ systems.
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