US: Foster Youth Are Sleeping in Jails, Offices, and Hotels Thanks to Flawed Federal Reforms (Opinion) (May require subscription) (Includes audio) (Includes video)
Newsweek – July 14, 2023
The highest-needs children in America’s foster care system will go to bed tonight in jail despite not facing criminal charges. Luckier kids will be assigned a budget hotel room. Others will wedge a cot or inflatable mattress between cubicles or beside a conference table. This is what it means to be a foster kid with complex behavioral, mental, and physical needs in a funding and regulatory climate that leaves state child welfare agencies with no good options. Something has gone wrong in a child’s life for them to enter the foster system. People closest to them or circumstances sometimes beyond anyone’s control let them down. For me, it was an alcoholic mother and a volatile procession of would-be stepfather figures. But my story isn’t unique, and many are far more harrowing, like the three young children who police delivered to my foster family after their father murdered their mother before turning the gun on himself.
https://www.newsweek.com/foster-youth-are-sleeping-jails-offices-hotels-thanks-flawed-federal-reforms-opinion-1812823