ABSTRACT
When policymakers went to work designing aggressive measures for collecting child support, they were responding—however myopically—to real human needs. In the same way, policymakers and activists who have in recent years called for more public money to expand and improve the foster-care system are likewise responding to real social needs. The inadequacy of the current foster care system is indeed obvious to almost all who have examined it—Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. The human significance of that inadequacy is all too clear in the life of one all-too-typical foster child, William Hagen.
