Ryan White wrote this overview of "The Child Mill", the Los Angeles Times' three-part series for ReportingonHealth.org. If you don't have
time to read the entire series, this is definitely worth a glance. It might even entice you to check out all three stories, which were published beginning Dec. 18. What's great about these articles is that series author Garrett Therolf devoted one of the three parts to a successful foster care system in Tennessee, which had one of the worst systems in the nation before it was overhauled.
Drawing on data of more than 1 million hotline-reported abuse investigations, Times’ reporter Garrett Therolf found that children in foster homes overseen by private agencies are one-third more likely to be physically, mentally or sexually abused than children in homes overseen by the state.
“Today, the state’s private foster family system – the largest in the nation – has become more expensive and more dangerous than the government-run homes it has largely replaced,” Therolf wrote in the A1 lead story of a three-part series that filled as many pages of the paper’s Dec. 18 news report.
.....Prompted by a 2001 lawsuit, Tennessee scuttled its system of paying private agencies a per-child fixed fee and instead pays private agencies hefty bonuses for good outcomes (foster children reunited with their parents or adopted), and exacts stiff penalties for bad outcomes (foster children falling out of placements within one year). Therolf said Tennessee’s new approach is paying off:
The incentive system has pushed agencies to monitor themselves for abuse problems and move children out of foster care into permanent homes as quickly as possible. Tennessee is now first in the nation for successfully finding permanent homes for children who previously spent more than two years in foster care. California, in comparison, ranks 27th.
The overview from Reporting on Health: www.reportingonhealth.org/2013/12/24/series-details-abuse-california’s-foster-care-system
The Los Angeles Times' three-part series: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-foster-care-dto,0,5583241.htmlstory#axzz2ojhNwJSR
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