Rethinking Foster Care

Over the past year, national groups have called for sweeping child welfare reforms, like repealing the Adoption and Safe Families Act or eradicating mandatory reporting laws. Some have voiced support for abolishing the child welfare system, or at least foster care, replacing it with a new public health approach rooted in supporting families with concrete resources like income, housing and child care. These calls for reform – now being embraced by a diverse and unlikely group of stakeholders – have sparked long overdue conversations. While these conversations about statutory reforms are important and will hopefully result in meaningful change, questions linger in my mind. Can we immediately achieve the outcomes we are seeking by simply changing our underlying values and attitudes towards families? Rather than waiting for sweeping legislation, could an overhaul of the child welfare system begin today? Take, for example, the pioneering work of the recently retired Judge Ernestine Gray, wh