“You’re an orphan, right? Do you think I’d know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are because I...

The foster care alumni movement asserts that child welfare professionals must meet increasingly higher standards of knowledge the more...

Fifty percent of foster children do not graduate high school and too few go on to learn a vocation or earn an advanced degree. Although...

The psychological stigma associated with being labeled an “orphan,” “foster child,” “ward of the court” or “at-risk youth” can wreak...

Devastating life events such as chronic family dysfunction, abuse and neglect, multiple placements, poor decisions by the court or...

Without due consideration for alumni feedback, politicians, judges, social workers and other policymakers have deemed kinship care a...

Foster Families or Residential Care: Which Placement do Former Fosters Choose? Prior to President Teddy Roosevelt’s 1909 White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children, institutional placement was considered the “best practice” of caring for dependent youth. Boards of trustees comprised of community leaders volunteered to oversee the operation of these institutions. They raised funds, hired and supervised staff, admitted children and dictated policy with little or n

The foster care system fell apart in the 1980s. There were more foster children than foster families, and too few orphanages remained to care for the overflow. Dependent kids sometimes ended up in improper facilities, such as detention centers, reformatories and state hospitals. Social workers quit in droves. Supervision and monitoring were minimal. Foster kids moved about in placement, sometimes dozens of times. Others slipped through the cracks or suffered abuse, neglect,

In response to the Protestant agenda of converting Catholic youths, Catholics began building orphanages exclusively for Catholics. Protestants did likewise for Protestants, as did Jews for Jewish kids. Orphanages of all cultural and religious orientation sprang up throughout America. By the 1900s, there were about 1,000 orphanages and institutions serving orphaned, dependent and delinquent youth. But liberal reformers began to criticize orphanages as “regimented institutions

More than 150 years ago Charles Loring Brace, an evangelical minister and founding director of the New York Children’s Aid Society, began...