ABSTRACT
When we began this work we had no concepts, strategies, or language to describe working with foster children and their families, and thus no way of communicating that work to others. As we struggled for a working model, we found the best analogy of outplacement to be that of a hostage crisis. This is not meant to be sardonic. Foster care is quite simply a situation in which a powerful other takes a child from the parent and then sets up a contract for his return. This particular contract comes in the form of an ordeal in which the clients must attend a series of odd encounters in professional offices where people speak in a strange language, write secret things about them, and invariably point them to a class or therapy so they can learn to parent their children according to ambiguous and ever-changing guidelines. The family and child must go to courtrooms where attorneys they did not hire talk about their case a great deal to each other and far less to them. To meet the ransom, the parent must engage in the evaluation, go to the therapist, attend the classes, endure the secrets, appear in the courtroom, learn the strange language, and allow herself to be talked about long enough and with enough enthusiasm so that the powerful others will let the child go free. As an ordeal, the process is also designed to weed out those who will not endure it. Before continuing, I must make two things quite explicit:
1. I recognize implicitly that the intended purpose of this abduction is benevolent, and not the base self-interest of political ideology or monetary gain.
