[Chickensoup]

You took in three children who were not state funded or wards. On your own dime. that is the grace of charity. My comment was about state kids who need homes and would have been in orphanages and training schools in the past and now are parceled out to professionally trained people who raise them in their homes, as an option to having the children in the streets.

[Clinging Bitterly]

Good people if you want to think that, fine. Elsewhere in the news we find a story of two boys in NE Portland Oregon who were farmed out to a state funded home and how things went for them. White, English speaking boys sent to a home where the foster parents do not speak English (presumably Spanish), kept in a windowless basement room, laundry and cleaning not being done and sent to school in dirty, stinky clothes and finally, subjected to long term harassment and sexual hazing by a succession of older boys in the home. And even though state caseworkers are required to make a personal visit to each child at least once every 30 days, they made none in most of two years the boys were in that home. The state paid them $750,000 in a settlement and the "news" is how much of that the lawyers got as much as the negligent actions of the state and the abusive actions of the foster parents.

It may not be the same in every state but the whole system in Oregon is rigged to maximize the federal spiff given to states for kids "in the system" to support an ever growing cadre of union represented government employees (indeed, foster parents themselves are forced to join and pay a part of their stipend to SEIU local 503) as the base of the Democrat political machine. They couldn't care less about the welfare of the kids, they are simply a revenue stream.

[Clinging Bitterly]

I suppose our kids are counted among those “on the streets” since they weren’t “in the system”, but I think they were better off.