Up to half of Los Angeles County’s foster children were needlessly placed in a system that is often more dangerous than their own homes because of financial incentives in state and federal laws, a two-year Daily News investigation has found. The county receives nearly $30,000 a year from federal and state governments for each child placed in the system — money that goes to pay the stipends of foster parents, but also wages, benefits and overhead costs for child-welfare workers and executives. For some special-needs children, the county receives up to $150,000 annually. “Called the ‘perverse incentive factor,’ states and counties earn more revenues by having more children in the system — whether it is opening a case to investigate a report of child abuse and neglect or placing a child in foster care,” wrote the authors of a recent report by the state Department of Social Services Child Welfare Stakeholders Group. Since the early 1980s, the number of foster children in California has gone up fivefold, and doubled in the county and nation. About one in four children will come into contact with the child welfare system before turning 18, officials say. This has overwhelmed social workers, who often don’t have time to help troubled families or monitor the care children receive in foster homes. The hundreds of thousands of children who have cycled through the county’s system over the years are six to seven times more likely to be mistreated and three times more likely to be killed than children in the general population, government statistics reveal. Officials acknowledge that more than 660 children embroiled in the county’s foster care system have died since 1991, including more than 160 who were homicide victims. ‘Could have stayed home’ “The county’s foster care system makes Charles Dickens’ descriptions look flattering,” said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. David Sanders, who took over as director of the Department of Children and Family Services in March, said experts estimate up to 50 percent of the 75,000 children in the system and adoptive homes could have been left in their parents’ care if appropriate services had been provided. He said DCFS comes into contact with nearly 180,000 children each year. “There were probably issues the kids and their families were facing, but if they had some kind of support services, the kids could have stayed home,” Sanders said. “At the extreme, there are clearly parents who never should have had their children. They torture their children and everyone in the community would agree that they should not have their children. “On the other end, you clearly have situations where families have done things, but may be under stress one day, have every intention of taking care of their children and are not dangerous, but involvement by child protective services ends up being much too intrusive.” The Daily News’ investigation of the child-welfare system, which is shrouded in secrecy by confidentiality laws, involved the review of tens of thousands of pages of government and confidential juvenile court documents, studies, computer databases and several hundred interviews. As the investigation progressed, state and county officials acknowledged that the financial incentives built into the laws encourage the needless placements of children in foster care, and officials have started taking steps to reform the system. Social worker Anthony Cavuoti, who has worked 14 years for the county, said DCFS employees use the most liberal of guidelines in deciding whether to remove a child from their home. Some parents have had their children removed for yelling at them, allowing them to miss or be late to school or having a dirty home. “The service that DCFS now provides is worse than the abuse that most abused children ever experienced. The trauma they inflict on ordinary children is unspeakable.” Overeager caseworkers Sanders said he thinks caseworkers have sometimes been too eager to remove children from their homes — a practice he is trying to change. “I think children should only be removed when there is an Foster care cash cow ’Perverse incentive factor’ rewards county for swelling system, critics say By Troy Anderson, Staff Writer Saturday, December 06, 2003 - 9 imminent risk. I’ve said consistently that we do have too many children who have been removed,” he said. “We need to provide the kind of supports to keep these kids at home.” As early as 1992, the state’s Little Hoover Commission cited experts who estimated that 35 percent to 70 percent of foster children in California should never have been removed from their families and have suffered deep psychological trauma as a result. On any given day, a total of 175,000 children are now in the state child protective system. In recent months, parents in several states have filed classaction lawsuits and testified before Congress, alleging that thousands of their children have been wrongfully taken from their homes. State and county officials admitted recently that they have placed too many children in foster care, especially poor and minority children. California has 13 percent of the nation’s total child population, but 20 percent of its foster children, statistics show. Minorities make up 85 percent of foster children in the county and 70 percent statewide. Experts say so many minorities are placed in foster care because the federal government pays for most of the costs of caring for foster children from poor families while states and counties are expected to pick up most of the tab for foster children from wealthier homes. “That’s exactly right,” Sanders said. “The eligibility for foster care reimbursements is poverty driven.” State and county officials say not enough has been done to help troubled families and the system has deteriorated into an “adversarial and coercive” one that places too much emphasis on investigating families for alleged mistreatment and removing their children. About 80 percent of foster children in the state and county are removed for “neglect,” which experts say is often a euphemism for poverty-related conditions, such as dirty or cramped homes, a lack of money to provide enough food, clothing and medical care to children or a single mother who works more than one job, can’t afford child care and leaves her children unattended. The Reason Public Policy Institute, a Los Angeles think tank, released a report in 1999 that found the current child protective system undermines parental authority, wrongfully accuses hundreds of thousands of innocent families and leaves many children at risk of mistreatment. The study’s author, Susan Orr, a former U.S. Department of Health and Human Services child-abuse researcher, said too many unfounded allegations drain the system’s resources. She noted that nearly 50 percent of child-abuse deaths occur in families that have had some contact with children’s services agencies. That statistic, say experts, shows the system is failing in its basic mission of protecting children from truly abusive parents. ‘Legal kidnapping’ A review of more than $25 million in foster care lawsuit settlements and judgments in Los Angeles County since the early 1990s found about half involved the unnecessary removal of children and their subsequent mistreatment or wrongful deaths, according to the county’s own admissions of wrongful seizures in county Claims Board documents or assertions by the families’ attorneys. In a Daily News review of 139 claims against the county — an action that usually precedes the filing of a lawsuit against the county — 26 of the claims involved allegations of wrongful seizures of children. In two cases, parents alleged their children were seized by the county for financial gain because local governments receive revenue for every child taken into the system. Parents also have alleged in dozens of recent appeals to state appellate courts that their children were needlessly taken from them. “It’s legal kidnapping to make a profit,” said Lancaster resident John Elliott, a 54-year-old former Warner Bros. special-effects technician, who filed a claim alleging social workers made false allegations against him and placed his daughter in foster care. After he spent $150,000 fighting to get his daughter back, the county ultimately admitted it was mistaken in taking his daughter and returned her to him. “They tell lies to keep your kids in the system,” Elliott said. “My daughter was abused the whole time she was there. It’s a multibillion-dollar business. It’s all about profit.” Santa Ana attorney Jack H. Anthony, who won a $1.5 million verdict in 2001 in a case involving the death of a foster child burned in scalding bathtub water, said parents often call asking him to file lawsuits over the unnecessary placement of their children in foster care. But social workers are generally immune from liability for the wrongful placement of a child in foster care, Anthony said. “It’s very difficult to hold anybody responsible for making a negligent decision to take the children,” Anthony said. “In most of the cases I see, the children would have been better off had they not been taken from their parents.” No clear standards For years, DCFS had no clear standards defining what child abuse or neglect was. The decision whether to remove a child was often left up to overworked 10 social workers’ hunches about how safe children were in their parents’ homes, Sanders said. Bruce Rubenstein, DCFS deputy director from 1991-97, said the department intimidated social workers into removing children for little or no reason after a couple of high-profile cases where children returned from foster care to their parents were murdered. “The word was, ‘Remove everybody. Remove all the kids.’ It’s pretty fundamental that the county was breaking up families that didn’t need to be broken up,” Rubenstein said. “Only new leadership giving clear messages can free that department from this sickness.” DCFS recently began training social workers in a researchbased tool called “structured decision-making,” which Sanders hopes will help them make better decisions about when to remove a child. The method has been successful in reducing unnecessary foster care placements in other states and counties. The stakeholders report found the vague definition of neglect, unbridled discretion and a lack of training form a dangerous combination in the hands of social workers charged with deciding the fate of families. Despite a quadrupling in reporting of child mistreatment cases since 1976 due to greater awareness of the child abuse problem in the nation, the number of actual cases of abuse and neglect annually has remained flat. Unfortunately, experts say in explaining the large number of false accusations, the DCFS Child Abuse Hotline has become a weapon of choice for malicious neighbors and angry spouses and lovers in child custody disputes. “A lot of people use child protective services for revenge,” Cavuoti said. “About half of the cases we get are completely bogus. They are just people calling to get back at a neighbor.” While about 7,500 children enter the county’s foster care system each year, only a small percentage are reunified with their families. A recent study found that nationwide 76 percent of children are returned home from foster care within a year. But in Los Angeles County, only 19 percent are returned home within a year of entering foster care. Troy Anderson, (213) 974-8985 troy.anderson@dailynews.com MORE KIDS IN THE SYSTEM Since the 1980s, the number of children in the childprotective system has sharply increased, government figures show: Nationwide, the number of children in foster care doubled from 273,500 in 1986 to 540,000 in 2003. In California, the number of children increased more than 400%, from 32,288 in 1983 to 175,000 in 2003. In Los Angeles County, the number increased from 42,894 in 1986 to approximately 75,000 in 2003. http://www.dailynews.com/cda/article/print/0,1674,200%257E20954%257... Following years of scandals and heartbreak in the nation’s largest child-protective system, Los Angeles County officials and child advocates hope a new director and innovative ideas will dramatically improve the lives of local foster children. “We spend $1.4 billion annually on foster care in Los Angeles County,” said Andrew Bridge, managing director of child welfare reform programs at the private Broad Foundation in Los Angeles. “We are not getting what we should for that $1.4 billion. And for the first time, Los Angeles County is beginning a constructive conversation to change that.” The proposed reforms by the county and state are set to begin next year. Congress plans to take up legislation in the summer that could radically change the way the child welfare system is funded. President George W. Bush has proposed a $5 billion-a-year flexible block grant that could be used to help keep families together — rather than placing their children in foster care. Most of the funds are now used to pay for the care of children in foster care. “It’s not going to cure everything,” said Wade F. Horn, assistant secretary of the U.S. Administration for Children and Families. “States could still choose to spend the money on things that don’t matter. “But for a state with innovative leadership that wants to invest in services that have proven effective in preventing child abuse and neglect, this would give them the flexibility to do that and reduce the need for costly (foster care) intervention later on.” Critics are skeptical about whether officials will follow through with their plans, citing innumerable failed attempts to reform the system in the past. Critics also expect heavy opposition from what Ways to care for an ailing foster system Federal funds could help keep more kids at home By Troy Anderson Staff Writer Sunday, December 07, 2003 - 11 they call the private “child-abuse industry,” which has grown wealthy and powerful over the years off the $20 billion-a-year child welfare system, a two-year investigation by the Daily News found. A recent state Department of Social Services report found the indirect costs of child mistreatment and foster care, such as juvenile delinquency, adult criminality and lost productivity to society, total $95 billion annually. At the heart of the system’s failures, state officials admit in documents, are “perverse financial incentives” in federal and state laws that encourage local governments to earn money by placing and keeping too many children unnecessarily in foster care. “Financial incentives, inherent in the state and federal government structure, are encouraging the retention of children in foster care until they reach adulthood,” researcher Julia K. Sells wrote in a report on child welfare privatization for the San Francisco-based Pacific Research Institute think tank. “States are actually profiting from keeping children in the system because they continue to receive federal funds.” David Sanders, director of the county Department of Children and Family Services, said experts estimate that as many as half of the county’s foster children could have been left in their parents’ care if the appropriate services had been provided to the families. This year, the county settled a class-action lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California that called for improvements in the mental-health treatment foster children receive. It also led to the closure of the long-distressed MacLaren’s Children Center in El Monte — the site of numerous horror stories of abuse, neglect and even death over the years. “Throughout this case, there is a stream of tales of sadness, desperation and despair,” U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz said when he approved the settlement. “There is no doubt, there are almost no instances where someone said the system has worked well. “But this settlement is a start. It’s a very admirable change and innovative. The foster care system has proven to be totally inadequate and disgraceful so far.” The investigation also found widespread misuse of taxpayer funds and some of the highest salaries in the nation among the nonprofit foster family agencies and group homes responsible for most of the 30,000 children in foster homes. The $1.4 billion DCFS budget, which has swelled from $103 million in 1985 when the department was created, pays to support a total of 75,000 children in the system and adoptive homes. In the private foster care agencies that oversee most of the children, some executives receive up to $310,000 a year in salaries and benefits and spend millions of taxpayer dollars for posh offices, expensive furniture and luxury cars, according to tax returns and county audits. County officials and child advocates acknowledge that reforms are needed to overhaul the way the county contracts with group homes and the foster family agencies that recruit foster parents and oversee children’s care. Another key reform, according to child advocates and county officials, began in November when the Board of Supervisors voted to negotiate with the federal government for a waiver that would allow DCFS to use $250 million of its $1.4 billion budget on services to help keep children with their families, instead of placing them in foster care. Using a similar federal waiver and a program known as “performance-based contracting,” Illinois was able in the late 1990s to reduce its foster care population by half and prevent many needless foster care placements. DCFS recently renegotiated contracts with foster-family agencies and is in the process of negotiating a new contract with its group homes. The new contracts are expected to hold the agencies accountable for providing safe homes and good education for foster children. Under the current “buck-a-head” payment structure, the private agencies lose revenue when children are reunified with their families or put up for adoption, child advocates say. “There are a lot of twisted incentives,” said Benjamin Wolf, associate legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union in Chicago, which sued Illinois in the late 1990s and forced the state to use performance-based contracting. The innovative form of contracting improved children’s lives and forced about half of the agencies to close because they couldn’t meet the new standards. Los Angeles County Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen said the county should have only 12,000 to 15,000 children in foster homes. “We have way too many kids in our system,” said Janssen, who was one of the first county officials to support reforms now under way. DCFS officials expect a tough lobbying campaign to get the federal waiver and don’t expect a decision until March. “We really think this offers an opportunity to start to fix 12 the system,” said Sanders, who took over as head of DCFS last March after the Board of Supervisors called for the resignation of the previous director. “It’s not the silver bullet, but at least it’s an opportunity to start the kind of major reforms we need to have in place.” Like many of the reforms the state and county have agreed to, critics are skeptical about whether the proposed reforms will help much, noting that the child welfare system has long abused its power to break up families for its own financial gain. “It’s a money-changing game,” said Beverly Hills attorney Debra Opri, who won a $75,000 settlement earlier this year from the county on behalf of a Pasadena man whose distraught wife pushed their two children off a courthouse roof, killing them, and then jumped to her death. She had just learned her children would be returned to foster care. DCFS had made a series of errors in the case that the father claimed led to his children’s deaths. “Instead of selling sprockets and gidgets, the children are getting sold,” the lawyer said. Manhattan Beach attorney Sanford Jossen, who filed a class-action lawsuit in 2000 alleging staff at MacLaren Children’s Center manhandled children and broke their bones, wrote in a court objection to the ACLU settlement that it seduces the public into believing reforms are on the way, but in reality does little more than create a six-member advisory panel to make recommendations with no timeline for implementation. “In this respect, history continues to repeat itself,” Jossen wrote. “Studies are done. Recommendations are made. Implementation does not occur. More delays result. The proposed settlement agreement creates the illusion of promise, but on closer inspections provides for nothing.” State Department of Social Services spokeswoman Blanca Castro said the state is redesigning the foster care system and focusing on what can be done to keep families together. The result is several recent reports by the Child Welfare Services Stakeholders Group, a group of 60 child welfare experts, that call for an “ambitious and farreaching overhaul” of the state’s foster care system. The reforms, starting in January, call for Los Angeles and 10 other counties to use a series of innovative programs that have been successful elsewhere in the nation. “We don’t expect to turn this around overnight,” Castro said. “It’s taken us 20 years to get to this point. It’s going to take five to 10 years to turn this boat around.” Troy Anderson, (213) 974-8985, troy.anderson@dailynews.com http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~1816348,00.html# Sunday, December 07, 2003 - Since 1998, county auditors have found more than $9 million in unallowable or questionable expenses by the private foster-care agencies that have contracts with Los Angeles County. The audits revealed taxpayer funds were used to pay off Las Vegas gambling debts, call psychic hotlines and pay for jewelry, parties, lottery tickets, alcohol, vacations, antiques, artwork and even a cremation. “They have abused both children and taxpayers,” said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. “Particularly in these tough economic times, the fact that money is being misspent this way is absolutely appalling. Local governments are screaming for more revenues, yet they are grossly misspending these funds, frittering away this money without any accountability at all.” Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said the county should be reimbursed for those misappropriated funds. “There is no excuse for using money intended for foster children to cremate one’s father-inlaw or to use those funds at Victoria’s Secret,” he said. Some of the executives of the private foster care agencies that oversee the children receive up to $310,000 a year in salaries and benefits, enjoy extravagant lifestyles and drive luxury cars provided to them at public expense, the county audits reveal. Some directors of foster-family agencies and group homes drive around in head-turning vehicles Jaguars, a Land Rover, a Cadillac Escalade SUV, Mercedes and Lexus provided to Private agencies diverting millions Audits find parties, vacations, more By Troy Anderson Staff Writer 13 them at public expense, according to the audits. One official billed the taxpayers more than $12,000 for membership dues and a banquet party at the Beverly Hills Country Club. “I think it suggests Los Angeles County is a national scandal,” said Richard Wexler, an author, former university professor and executive director of the National Coalition For Child Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va. “There are lots of troubled foster care systems in the United States. But Los Angeles County is always on people’s lists.” Department of Children and Family Services Director David Sanders, who earns $175,000 a year and is among the nation’s highest-paid public child welfare agency directors, said taxpayer dollars should be spent ensuring the safety of children. “When we have that kind of credibility issue, it’s little wonder people can raise questions about our ability to get the work done,” said Sanders, who took over the department in March. Since 1985, the four previous DCFS directors have resigned under pressure from top county officials. As private foster care agencies made millions of dollars off the children under their care, critics say the Board of Supervisors looked the other way. From 1995 to 2002, foster family agencies, group homes and others spent more than $262,000 lobbying and making campaign contributions to the supervisors, including more than $67,000 in campaign contributions. “I think it’s clear that foster care has become an industry in some parts of Los Angeles County,” said child advocate Nancy Daly Riordan, founder of United Friends of Children and wife of former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. “There is definitely a financial incentive to keep kids in foster homes way beyond what is necessary.” Troy Anderson, (213)974-8985 troy.anderson@dailynews.com MISUSED FUNDS The group homes and foster family agencies that care for most of Los Angeles County’s foster children have misused more than $9 million in taxpayer funds since 1998, paying off debts at Las Vegas casinos, buying lingerie and even paying for the cremation of an executive’s father-in-law, county audits reveal. Based on the audits, the Department of Children and Family Services reviewed $6 million of the unallowable and questionable costs from March 1998 to May 2001 and required the agencies to pay back $1.5 million. So far, the department has received about $600,000. Here are examples of the disallowed spending: Group home directors paid $4,500 in debts at two Las Vegas casinos and spent $54,472 on lease payments for a luxury home. Foster family agency directors bought $1,814 worth of lingerie and racked up $6,113 on 116 restaurant meals, even sticking taxpayers with the tab for their alcoholic beverages. An agency director spent $774 to cremate his father-in-law. Officials spent $12,247 for a membership at the Beverly Hills Country Club and a $6,013 banquet party for 150 employees. Agency officials spent $57,379 on legal fees and to settle sexual harassment lawsuits by three former employees. Directors purchased or leased two Jaguars, a Range Rover, Mercedes, Lexus, Ford Expedition, GMC Suburban SUV and a Cadillac Escalade SUV, which cost $1,083 a month to lease. An official made $4,715 in credit card charges for various unidentified items during trips to the Czech Republic, Great Britain and Panama, and $989 in purchases made in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Hotel, Luxor and Rio hotels. Auditors found agency executives purchased $3,800 worth of pantyhose, razors, suits, shoes, pet supplies and jewelry and beauty supplies in Las Vegas. Officials billed the county $2,950 a month for a child who had left the facility four years before, collecting a total of $35,400. Payments for a president’s 1998 Land Rover and credit card charges for trips to London and New Orleans. The audits showed the agencies seemingly missed no opportunity to bill the taxpayers for personal items, no matter how trifling. One audit noted $152 was spent on cigarettes, liquor, pet food and a church donation. http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/ 0,1413,200%257E20954%257E1815199,00.html?search=filter# 14 LOS ANGELES — Up to half of Los Angeles County’s foster children were needlessly placed in a system that is more dangerous than their own homes because of incentives in state and federal laws, a two-year probe has found. A Daily News investigation discovered that the county receives nearly $30,000 a year from federal and state governments for each child placed in the system — money that goes to pay the stipends of foster parents, but also wages, benefits and overhead costs for child-welfare workers and executives. For some special-needs children, the county receives up to $150,000 annually. “Called the perverse incentive factor, states and counties earn more revenues by having more children in the system — whether it is opening a case to investigate a report of child abuse and neglect or placing a child in foster care,” wrote the authors of a recent report by the state Department of Social Services Child Welfare Stakeholders Group. Since the early 1980s, the number of foster children in California has gone up fivefold, and doubled in the county and nation. About one in four children will come into contact with the child welfare system before turning 18, officials said. This has overwhelmed social workers, who often don’t have time to help troubled families or monitor the care children receive in foster homes. The hundreds of thousands of children who have cycled through the county’s system over the years are six to seven times more likely to be mistreated and three times more likely to be killed than children in the general population, government statistics reveal. Report: Many Foster Children Needlessly Placed In Dangerous Homes County Receives Money For Each Child Placed In Homes POSTED: 11:54 a.m. PST December 8, 2003 Officials acknowledge that more than 660 children embroiled in the county’s foster care system have died since 1991, including more than 160 who were homicide victims. “The county’s foster care system makes Charles Dickens’ descriptions look flattering,” said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. David Sanders, who took over as director of the Department of Children and Family Services in March, said experts estimate up to 50 percent of the 75,000 children in the system and adoptive homes could have been left in their parents’ care if appropriate services had been provided. He said DCFS comes into contact with nearly 180,000 children each year. The Daily News’ investigation of the child-welfare system, which is shrouded in secrecy by confidentiality laws, involved the review of tens of thousands of pages of government and confidential juvenile court documents, studies, computer databases and several hundred interviews. As the investigation progressed, state and county officials acknowledged that the financial incentives built into the laws encourage the needless placements of children in foster care, and officials have started taking steps to reform the system. Copyright 2003 by NBC4.tv. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. 15 Judge Calls For Case Reviews Of 30,000 Foster Children Most Urgent Need For 8,000 Teens Close To Being Released From System POSTED: 1:05 PM PST December 10, 2003 UPDATED: 1:16 PM PST December 10, 2003 LOS ANGELES — A judge wants an unprecedented review of the cases of half of the 30,000 children in Los Angeles County foster homes to determine if they could be safely returned to their own families or relatives, it was reported Wednesday. Juvenile Court presiding Judge Michael Nash, responding to a weekend article in the Los Angeles Daily News, said Tuesday the most urgent need is for judges, attorneys and social workers to review the cases of about 8,000 foster children — mostly teenagers — who have been in foster care for years and are about to turn 18, after which they will be released from the system. “We need to closely review each of these cases as they come up and determine what is the most appropriate long-range plan for these kids,” Nash said in remarks reported by the Daily News. “For many of those kids, it will require us to go back and look at their family situations. Are there responsible adults they can rely upon once they leave the system?” Nash said. The Daily News reported Sunday that up to half of the 75,000 children in the system and adoptive homes were needlessly placed in a system that is often more dangerous than their own homes because the county receives $30,000 to $150,000 in state and federal revenues for each placement. The $1.4 billion Department of Children and Family Services budget currently pays to support a total of 75,000 children, but Nash pointed out that the number of children in foster homes has dropped from 52,000 in 1998 to 30,000 now, according to the Daily News. He said about half of those children are placed with relatives. Andrew Bridges, managing director of child welfare reform programs at the private Broad Foundation, told the Daily News that since the mid-1990s, the county’s child welfare system has been based on an aggressive policy of detaining children because of the financial incentives. Copyright 2003 by NBC4.tv. All rights reserved. Failing the children County foster care system corrupted by profits Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - A judge’s call this week for a review of foster care cases in Los Angeles County should be the just the opening move in a long-overdue overhaul of a truly messedup system. The action came after the Daily News reported that as many as half of the kids removed from their families by the Department of Children and Family Services were placed in foster-care conditions that were often worse or more dangerous than home and that more than 660 kids had died while in county foster care since 1991. This is a tragedy, and it’s compounded by the fact that the county and foster agencies actually get large amounts of federal money by taking kids away from their families and placing them in foster care. Foster care should be the measure of last resort, used only in severe cases to the ultimate benefit of the child. But it now seems clear that the system has become corrupted and in need of a top-to-bottom investigation to root out the Dickens-like culture that profits on the suffering of little children. Exposing a corrupt system Re “Foster care cash cow” (Dec. 7): I wanted to commend Troy Anderson for his article on the county’s foster care system. He has obviously done his homework and fearlessly tread where few reporters will go. For all of us parents who have had our children ripped off by the government, we want to thank Troy for his bravery and the editor of the Daily News for the support in telling

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