Safe Families for Children

In child welfare, host homes can be a community-based solution to address families who need help with their children, writes BJ Walker. 

Three leading firms that represent children in New York City and Buffalo have filed a lawsuit seeking to halt "extrajudicial" host home programs from operating.

The New York state child welfare agency has approved regulations authorizing families in times of crisis to place their children with “host family homes.”

In the summer of 2012, Corisma Gillespie hit a crisis point. Pregnant with her second child, the 20-year-old from the west side of Chicago had lost her job at McDonald’s. Her car was impounded, and she was about to become homeless.

It’s no secret that our foster care system is overburdened. More than 250,000 children enter foster care each year. We don’t have enough foster families to meet this demand, and we don’t have enough adoptive families either.

Note: This column was updated on November 6 It was a big week in Chicago. The Cubs finally broke through and won the World Series, and all of the intractable problems with child welfare were fixed.

When Chelsea Geyer heads to the front of a congregation to sell them on helping Washington, D.C.’s child welfare system, the 27-year-old co-founder of DC127 comes with a two-pronged sales pitch that meshes the Good Book with the modern city.