Editor’s note: This segment was rebroadcast on Oct. 13, 2025. Click here for that audio.
More than 350,000 American kids are now wards of the state — that means the government has assumed the parental role for these foster children.
Some will end up with foster families, some in group homes, and many — thousands at a time — will be runaways. And when it comes to foster care family placements, some kids will end up not with one or two, but with a dozen or more. And when they turn 18? That’s when they’re turned out of the system, sometimes literally onto the streets.
None of that came as a surprise to Seattle journalist and author Claudia Rowe, who covered child welfare for decades at the Seattle Times. But she was taken aback when she heard a defense lawyer argue that a 19-year-old former foster care child on trial for murder was blaming the teen’s actions on the foster care system. Could there be something about the system that actually fosters violent behavior? That question and others launched Rowe’s very deep and often damning dive into the country’s child welfare system.
Rowe joins Here & Now to discuss her new book “Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care.”
Book excerpt: ‘Wards of the State’
By Claudia Rowe
From “Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care” by Claudia Rowe (Abrams, 2025). Reprinted with permission.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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