Guest View: How the Foster Care Review Board hurts Nebraska children

Guest View: How the Foster Care Review Board hurts Nebraska children

GETTTING TO “GOTCHA”: HOW THE FOSTER CARE REVIEW BOARD HURTS NEBRASKA CHILDREN

By Richard Wexler

Mary Callahan is a foster parent from Maine who got fed up with the fact that almost every child the state placed with her never needed to be taken from his or her birth parents. Her activism helped transform the Maine system into a national leader in keeping children safe by keeping families together.

Callahan has a term for how most child welfare systems work. They put a family under a microscope, judge anything and everything they do, and then lie in wait, for as long as it takes for a parent to slip up. Callahan calls it the “’gotcha’ moment.”