Somebody Else's Children: The Courts, the Kids, and the Struggle to Save America's Troubled Families - Softcover

Hubner, John; Wolfson, Jill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0609801708 ISBN 13: 9780609801703

Publisher: Three Rivers Press, 1998

Synopsis

Award-winning journalists Hubner and Wolfson offer a pathbreaking investigation of the family court system where over two and a half million cases are decided every year, through this examination of the day-to-day workings and life-and-death decisions in one typical family court system in Santa Clara County, California. A sunbelt boomtown, urban slum, and rural paradise all combined, Santa Clara mirrors the problems of most American cities, making it the perfect model for this insightful and often harrowing chronicle which provides an intimate look at the lives of the children whose fate the court decides. This powerful book tells the personal stories of a battle between biological and adoptive parents for the right to raise a baby born drug-addicted; an eight-year-old caught in his parents' bitter divorce; and a teenage mother raising her children in a neighborhood ruled by gangs. Throughout there are the hundreds of caseworkers, judges, and social workers struggling in the trenches, trying to make the system work, trying to protect the children forgotten by society.  Clearly and engagingly written, Somebody Else's Children offers rare insight into the state of the American family today.

"Powerful...A gut-wrenching book. The portraits are etched in acid.  While it may not be the kind of book all of us want to read, it certainly is the kind we should."--Washington Post

About this title

About the Author:

John Hubner and Jill Wolfson are award-winning journalists, based in Northern California. For this book, they won awards from the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, the American Bar Association and the Bay Area Book Reviewer's Association.

From Kirkus Reviews:

An unusually levelheaded and perceptive view of the so- called child welfare system. Hubner, a reporter with the San Jose Mercury News, and Wolfson, a freelance journalist (and former probation officer), live in California's Santa Clara County, site of Silicon Valley and the boomtown of San Jose, now the 11th-largest city in the country. Despite its flourishing economy, San Jose is burdened with all the usual societal problems, including juvenile delinquency and child abuse. With the cooperation of the presiding judge of the county juvenile court, the authors were given access to usually confidential court, probation, and child welfare agency records, and they have produced a fascinating insider's view of the mesh of policy, precedent, legislation, and social gestalt that shapes how children in trouble are treated. They interviewed not only children at risk, but their families, friends, teachers, foster parents, and counselors. Neither awash in bathos nor steeped in cynicism, their report focuses on a number of individuals, including Jenny, a teenage mother fighting to keep her baby; Nicky, a baby born prematurely with cocaine and alcohol in his frail system; and Corey, a 15-year-old who stabbed a counselor to death. These stories gain dimension by being set within the larger perspective of America's roller-coaster attitudes toward out-of-control children, a review of often confusing social welfare policy (preserve the family and keep the children safe--sometimes mutually exclusive goals), and an understanding, if not always sympathetic, look at the difficult roles of social workers, attorneys, and prison staff. Despite increasing political pressure to punish juvenile offenders with long prison terms, the authors produce impressive statistics to show that incarceration doesn't work and that intensive, long- term therapy in small, controlled settings does. Balanced, informative, and often very sad, not only in the tragic stories but in the picture of a system that seems close to being overwhelmed. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Three Rivers Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0609801708
• ISBN 13: 9780609801703
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384