On Thursday, November 6, 2003, the Human Resources Subcommittee of the United States House of Representatives' Ways and Means Committee, held a hearing to examine "a recent failure to protect child safety". The hearing was to investigate an alleged child abuse case in New Jersey involving the starvation of a family's adopted children and the subsequent dismissal of social workers who had been investigating the family but missed the alleged abuse. Accountability was the Committee's focus since in 2002, federal taxpayers provided the states $3.1 billion to support children in adoptive and foster settings, and an additional $2.8 billion in...
