The Epic Battle To Change Foster Care

The book by The Times reporter covering welfare is timely since May is Foster Care Month. It is also in the past week that Public Advocate Mark Green released a damning study of foster care. He reported that abuse rates are up 144 percent in the last four years.
The book is a fascinating courtroom drama that pits Lowry against the foster-care system dominated by Jewish and Catholic agencies that were allowed by law to give preference to their own kind, while children of minority race and other religious backgrounds were regularly discriminated against.
Shirley Wilder, gave birth at age 14 to a son, Lamont, who like his mother, disappeared into the States foster-care maze. She experienced brutal treatment in a Dickensian reformatory at Hudson, NY, for children convicted of criminal offenses, then the last resort for children rejected for foster care.
Tragically Wilder died of cancer at age 39. She was left motherless at four, raped at nine, and dead at 39.
The book traces Bernsteins search for the son, Lamont, who, like his mother, suffered abuse in the system. It is a powerful examination of foster-care and the cycle that so many families were caught up in.