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In Wounded Innocents Richard Wexler describes how well-meaning efforts
to help children have gone terribly wrong and then explains what needs to
be done to set the chaotic foster-care system right.
-Prometheus Books-
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In Wounded Innocents Richard Wexler describes how well-meaning efforts
to help children have gone terribly wrong and then explains what needs to
be done to set the chaotic foster-care system right.
-Prometheus Books-
|
He says:
It hurts children who have never been maltreated, by disrupting their families, invading their privacy, and jeopardizing the bond of trust that is essential for healthy parent-child relationships.
It hurts children . . . by making it too easy to pull them from their homes and place them in the nation's chaotic system of foster care . . . "Foster care is the garbage dump," says a woman who survived it. "That's what they do with kids when they don't know what else to do with them --- throw 'em in foster care."
Perhaps worst of all, the system does terrible harm to the children who need help the most, those who have been severely abused. False and trivial reports flood the system, cascading down upon untrained, inexperienced workers who already have far more than they can handle, stealing their time and attention from children who really do need their interventioon . . .
In the name of "child protection," children have been beaten. In the name of "children's rights," children have been raped. In the name of "erring on the side of the child," children have been murdered.
A well-argued, in-depth study.
--Publishers Weekly
A chilling look at the harm child protective
services can do.
--Focus on Children, A Handbook for Journalists, Columbia
Journalism Review.
Richard Wexler thoroughly documents the terrifying harms to children
from a child abuse and neglect system that rides roughshod over the
rights of families.
--Diane Redleaf, former Supervisory Attorney, Children's Rights
Project, Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago
"In his most excellent book, Wexler reports that sexual abuse of foster children by other foster children is epidemic and grossly underreported. A study found that 28 percent of children in Baltimore foster homes had been abused. A former New York Child Protective Services worker is quoted by Wexler as saying, 'Foster care is like Russian roulette.' . . . a well-documented, eye-opening expose of America's child protection system, which, Wexler contends, despite good intentions, creates more problems than it solves." John Rosemond, syndicated columnist
The problem with our child-protective system is not that it hurts parents, though of course it does. The problem with our child protective system is that it hurts children.
This extensively researched volume deserves to be read by anyone concerned with child abuse.
--Library Journal
