Food stamps shouldn't be redeemable for anything except basic foods and staples - classes for training should be the province of volunteers and hand-wringing do-good agencies.
I will agree that protective custody is a last resort, but I see a LOT of need for last resort action. If state wards grow up to be criminals, what's the difference? Many would have had the same fate with lesser options in their mother's care anyway.
There are no such thing as food stamps anymore. When welfare was reformed during the Clinton administration one of the things changed was the food stamp program.
You see, it is degrading for a poor person to be forced to present food stamps in front of other cash-paying customers! So what did the government do? It replaced food stamps with an ATM card. This ATM card can be used in certain locations to withdraw real, green, American cash.
So what do these people do? They withdraw cash and spend the money on drugs, booze, whatever and hit up the food banks for staples. I knew a young woman who regularly spent her "food-stamp" cash on crack and expected her parents to feed her two children (which they gladly did).
I imagine many of these undernourished kids in Baltimore are seeing their food stamp money spent elsewhere.