orphanages

Back when cases involving missing children – many of them runaways from foster care – were making headlines in Washington, D.C., Marie Cohen rushed to try to shift responsibility from a failing foster care system.

Connecticut, 1995: Emily Hernandez, a child-known-to-the-system, dies. Gov. John Rowland demands that caseworkers tear apart more families. There is a foster care panic, a huge increase in children torn from their families.

In May, I wrote about how 60 Minutes, the venerable CBS newsmagazine program, got suckered by Maryville, an even more venerable orphanage in Illinois – citing it as evidence that Newt Gingrich was on to something when he suggested institutionalizing poor people’s children.

Every few years media and politicians fall in love with another Magic Orphanage. News stories assure us that the Magic Orphanage is nothing like those mean old Victorian places. Now “house parents” supposedly work miracles with happy children rescued from their horrible parents.

J.K. Rowling’s charity, Lumos, has been going through a dramatic expansion and recently set up shop in the United States. Now, Lumos has released a new short film narrated by Rowling that seeks to draw attention to the disservice done to children by long-term institutional care.