Foster care often fails kids with disabilities. Consider these cases
An NPR investigation reveals that children with disabilities in the foster care system face systemic failures and poor outcomes. The report highlights the extreme complexity of navigating medical and social services for these children.
Why it matters
The findings underscore significant gaps in the child welfare system's ability to support the most vulnerable youth, often leading to lifelong harm.
The woman who calls 911 says there's a diabetic teen boy in distress, but when police and paramedics arrive at the house in Mesa, Arizona she comes outside to say he's just "pretending that he's dead on the floor" because he wants attention.
When those first responders go inside, they find something tragically different.
Fifteen-year-old Christian Williams isn't breathing. His lips are blue and his heart has stopped.
The small ranch house — lit up from inside in the dark, desert night — is a residential treatment facility for seven young men in foster care. The facility provided specialized mental health care for Christian, who, in the one month since he'd come to the group home, was in and out of the hospital for complications from his Type 1 diabetes.
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