Foster care a "toxic intervention"

Foster care a "toxic intervention"

This is a step in the right direction because this new settlement puts a new emphasis on the most important change Baltimore needs to make: Doing more to keep children out of foster care in the first place.

Most parents who lose their children to foster care are nothing like those whose cases, rightly, make headlines. And in typical cases, extensive research shows that children left in their own homes do better even than comparably-maltreated children placed in foster care. That does not mean no child ever should be taken from her or his parents. Rather, it means that foster care is an extremely toxic intervention that should be used sparingly and in small doses.