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Foster care unexpectedly took center stage at President Trump’s congressional address on Tuesday.
First Lady Melania Trump highlighted her Foster the Future initiative — which secures scholarships and opportunities for kids in foster care — and President Trump recognized Jeff Denard, a foster parent to 40 children.
The administration has pulled back the curtain on a heartbreaking crisis. Recent headlines reveal a grim story: A 9-year-old Detroit boy told Children’s Protective Services that his mother wanted to kill him — months before he was found in a shallow grave.
This isn’t an anomaly; it’s the norm in child protection. Children are dying on the radar screens of agencies failing to protect them. Since 1998, child murders by parents have surged 71%. The Trump administration has demonstrated its commitment to safeguarding children before more lives are lost.
As a foster mom to abused children, I know this situation first hand.
For years, I’ve grieved the death of my foster baby, Daniel, who came into my life in 2017, a few years after I attended a foster-care orientation intending to help teens. In a run-down building in Phoenix, a social worker asked me to take home a baby.
“We have newborns sleeping in government offices,” she said. I was stunned.
That’s when I learned that every 15 minutes, a baby is born to one of the growing numbers of American drug addicts. I’d seen these pregnant women on city streets, disoriented and weary. I had no idea their infants were the largest group entering child protection.
Daniel spent three weeks in intensive care, tethered to a morphine drip, fighting for his life. I expected the complications of drug withdrawals, the convulsions, shaking, and sleepless nights. But I never imagined his life would be in jeopardy again — the next time, in a courtroom.
The state planned to return Daniel to the meth-addicted mother who abandoned him. The court required no lethality assessment, drug tests or safety checks. Daniel’s only protection was a cousin’s promise to “keep an eye on him.”
I always thought children died from abuse because no one knew what was happening behind closed doors. I was wrong. Authorities know.
In New York City, more than half of the children who die from abuse each year are documented by authorities; in Colorado, that number has been as high as 82%.
Know their names: Gavin Peterson. Gabriel Fernandez. Baby Dylan. In Brooklyn, a judge returned 1-year-old Ella Vitalis to her abusers in June 2023; she died three months later of a blunt force head injury, broken jaw and bite marks to her head. The list goes on. For survivors, the nightmare doesn’t end: over 50% are re-abused within three years of returning home.
Between 2011 and 2020, I took in 10 of these children. Hearing after hearing, I watched the system treat children as second-class citizens. A judge once pronounced from the bench, “Mom’s rights are constitutional; the baby’s rights are only statutory.”
He was wrong. Children may have a diminished capacity to exercise their rights, but the Constitution’s promise of life and liberty applies to them equally.
Sometimes, agencies ignore repeated 911 calls. Other times, agencies practice “voluntary in-home services,” leaving children with their abusers as they pursue “reunification” at any cost.
Incensed by these injustices, I founded the Center for the Rights of Abused Children in 2017 to provide at-risk kids with attorneys to assert their constitutional rights. Nearly all states give accused parents attorneys. Abused children?
They typically are on their own. In 2019, the Trump administration enabled states to access federal matching funds for child and parent attorneys. Now, the urgent priority is ensuring every child receives an attorney to fight for them.
The day I kissed Daniel goodbye, I packed a basket with everything he’d need, told him he was loved and drove away, reassuring myself that he’ll be OK back with his birth mother, despite her addiction.
Less than 24 hours later, standing in the ER, the earth crumbled and gave way. No.
This can’t be happening, as the doctor told me Daniel had passed away of “unclear” causes. But nothing could drown out the doctor’s words: “We did everything we could.”
No. We did not do everything we could.
Darcy Olsen is the founder and CEO of the Center for the Rights of Abused Children, author of “The Right to Try” and is writing a book about her experiences fostering 10 children.