I'm sorry the interview w/ Andrew Bridge was so short. As a former attorney ad litem for children in the abused and neglected care/court system, I found many of his statements to be way too broad, and assuming that all systems are the same everywhere.

Every state is different, with different resources, though it's safe to say that all are starved to some degree for money.

Two of Bridge's statements bother me most. First- that case workers have only 2 choices; remove the child or leave and do nothing. That is simply not true in my jurisdiction, of all places, Texas.

Two, he says children belong w/ parents who know them and love them best. He states it as if it were always true. My own sad observation tells me it is not true. There are parents who do not love their children, who should never have become parents.

I have seen parents given tremendous amounts of support, home care asisstance, including cleaning people, pparenting classes, experienced parents who will help them at any time, drug cessation programs, medication, etc., etc., and they do not and often cannot manage to care for their kids.

One of my saddest cases was a severely mentally disabled woman. She did love her kids, I believe, but her development was no more than that of a small child, and she simply could not cope. I concluded there was no choice but to remove her kids.

That doesn't mean contact should be limited. But where parents are truly dangerous to their kids - for example, they will not remove a dangerous boyfriend from the home, they will not stop doing drugs that turn them into zombies, they never show up to visit their kids though they have the means, etc., one can conclude that they don't really care (enough) about their children to risk leaving the kids with them. There are good foster parents, and living with them is much better than staying with a dangerously violent neglectful parent.

Of course, this leaves out all kinds of qualifications of my own statements, but it expresses my main reservations about Mr. Bridges TOTN statements. I will look for his book.

Sent by Cheryl | 3:48 PM ET | 02-27-2008

I was in foster care in 1962. Like today's speaker I was put there because my mother became mentally ill (schizophrenia).

There wasn't much screening for foster parents at that time. My oldest brother and I ended up in foster care for over a year where we were sexually abused. Eventually we were both moved to another home. In the interim my mother would would have visits with my father and end up pregnant again. Each time my mother would come out long enough to have my brothers and then back to the hospital she went. My younger brother ended up in a fairly decent foster home. My youngest brother had it the roughest. He cried a lot as small infants do. The foster parents ended up throwing him across the room into his crib and he had a concussion. By the time he got to health care he was diagnosed with colic and given Paragoric (for colic). My brother ended up blind and and nearly died. My father could not get custody of us back out of foster care until he remarried.

I believe since I am the only one who survived my childhood out of 4 kids that does not speak highly of the system. I did end graduating but only because I took the GED. It was difficult to concentrate given my home conditions. Later I went to college and received my Associates Degree.

I do not have any faith in the system. I have experienced all that can go wrong with the system from foster care to mental health care. Thank you for the opportunity to write.

Sent by Pat | 3:57 PM ET | 02-27-2008

The foster care system is truly broken, Mr. Bridge articulates beautifully the plight and unfortunately the fate of most foster children. He presents all the right solutions to this horrific problem - unfortunately, it seems, that no one listens. As the nurse practitioner in a crisis shelter for children, I am continuously frustrated by the speed with which children and moved into and out of our facility without taking the time to match the child with a family who can meet his or her needs. then when a poor placement fails, the child is back with us, again feeling like no one wants him or he has done something wrong. I wish for all our children the eventual outcome and success that Mr. Bridge experienced but know that this is far from the fate of most of these wonderful children.

Sent by Barbara | 4:10 PM ET | 02-27-2008

I would like to be the voice of my father who was in foster care. He was born in 1920, unwanted by his father who was a womanizer and as my mother put it "mean". My father's mother, rather than bring another child into this had an illegal abortion from which she died. My father was then sent into the foster care system. This would be the early 1930's. He joined the Coast Guard as a teenager. He never spoke of those days, but he suffered from depression and was an alcoholic. Through my own therapy, I can understand the emotional neglect he suffered and the impact on him. I see him as that child and it breaks my heart. I wish I had this insight before he died.

Sent by Tracy Casper | 5:32 PM ET | 02-27-2008

This story is about older children being removed from their homes. There are many children that are removed from birth after being drug affected. There are life long disabilities after the parents have done this to a child. My experience is that these parents continue to have drug-affected children. Is it best to keep the children in a home that the parents are too strung out on drugs to care for children? There are loving families looking for children to adopt. I have a child that is 3.5 years old. He only knows us parents and the state and courts have failed to follow State and Federal Laws to protect this child. The birth mother came to the courts when the child was 2 years old pregnant with another child. This child was also born drug affected and the courts sent her to a rehab facility that takes mothers with their infants. Our foster son has been going through visits with his birth mother. He has had anger management problems, sleep problems and has made up imaginary friends that protect him at his visits. The birth mother is now back on drugs and has shown she has a hard enough problem parenting one child. Is this a case where the children should stay with their birth parents or are there better places for children to grow up?

Sent by John Alan | 1:37 PM ET | 02-28-2008

Foster care destroyed my life. I would have been better off homeless. I was classified by the schools and put into remedial classes. I dropped out of school and eventually recieved my GED. I believed that I was always something 'other', I was never allowed to display normal teenage behavior. If I didn't listen to my foster parents, I could end up in another home or group home.
My education suffered, I suffered. I enrolled in a community college when I was 25, I am still going to college. I wsasn't stupid, I was depressed and neglected. I graduate this year with my social work degree.
I'm alive- despite foster care and the idoits who run the programs.

Sent by Amy | 6:25 PM ET | 02-28-2008

I am the second youngest of 40 children, and the youngest of 3...My parents came from next to nothing; my dad contracted polio as a child, literally had dirt floors and a tin roof as his childhood home, my mom, a dairy farm and dysfunction. Daddy was in foster care in the 30's and was treated so well that he prompted my mother to open their modest home to a child he knew in need. 40 children, and 20 some years they chose to retire. I may be biased, but I know for a fact that every one of those 40 would do what ever they could for their "Mom and Dad" to this day. I have been with my parents on several occasions when they bumped into someone who runs up to them in a retail store, introducing themselves (which is never necessary, my parents remember them all) and thanking them for what they did for them. In my parents eyes they did nothing more them offer their love. It was not for the money, there never was a whole bunch. Daddy was a factory worker, Mom stayed at home and volunteered at church. Daddy worked over time to ensure we had a "Family" vacation every summer (yes, we all went for 2 weeks) and that Christmas was always something to celebrate. These are my brothers and sisters, they call me the same. We share our Mom and Dad. I realize that unfortunately our story is the exception, not the rule. I just wish there was more told from the inside out.

Sent by Vicki | 10:00 AM ET | 02-29-2008

I am a law school student at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law and was enrolled in an externship program with the Third Judicial District Juvenile Division under the tutelage of Professor Krusciunas and guidance of Chief Referee Kelly Ramsey. I find the broad generalizations made by Andrew Bridges to be an accurate recognition of the way in which some people value human life. (Thanks to Posner everything is measured now against a currency that is backed entirely by faith, including the management of our court systems.) Sure, there are good people doing good things, but because government does not always respond like a market participant what little good being done is dwarfed by the amount of harm that is perpetrated.

In one jurisdiction in the Detroit area I saw a mere one fifth of the cases Chief Referee Ramsey heard between June and December of 2007. She diligently managed between 15 and as many as 23 cases in a given day, pushing her staff ten to twelve hours often times working straight through lunch. It was an intense and moving experience. Participants within the system are acutely aware of their limitations, and circumstances today that are no different than those experienced by Andrew Bridge. To make a difference in the lives of the children these children they recognize immediate intervention, care and support are often times necessary - but not possible through the system. In 2005 the Detroit Metropolitan Bar Association Foundation in cooperation with the 3rd Judicial Circuit Court and the Department of Human Services, formed, For The Seventh Generation. This program conceived by Chief Referee Ramsey provides immediate and basic needs support to wards facing the same problems Andrew Bridge faced as a child. It is in this context I have seen the best and the brightest devoting their lives to making a difference in the lives of the children just like Andrew Bridge. It is this devotion that keeps hope alive for the hundreds of children walking through the doors of Chief Referee Ramsey's court room not - the system.

For every one child like Andrew there are 100 more not as fortunate, just follow the 30,000 wards in Michigan in 2007 to see how they develop as adults. As for the two choices - reconsider from the eyes of the child and I will say I don't know a system that has a third option. Something is wrong. Fortunately there is still tension between those managing the cost of what is being done and the value placed on the child by devoted participants in the system, doing what needs to be done.

Sent by Hopeful | 5:10 PM ET | 02-29-2008