Receiving Home: Turning children into human teddy bears

Now here's some cold hard truth ladies and gentlemen.

Receiving Home: Turning children into human teddy bears

They are "shelters" - those first-stop parking place institutions in many communities where children are deposited for a few days or a week or a month or longer, to be examined and "assessed" by "trained staff" in order to prepare them for exactly what they would have gotten without the shelters – usually a succession of foster homes.

Like most people in child welfare, the people who run shelters, and the people who volunteer there mean well. They’ve done a great job of convincing themselves that they’re really helping children. But they’re not. Shelters do nothing for children. Shelters are exercises in adult self-indulgence and adult self-delusion.