Wasted
The Plight of America's Unwanted Children
by Patrick T. Murphy America's child welfare agencies are failing the children. Children remain with abusive parents while parents receive counseling, and although the child abuse doesn't stop with therapy, the Department of Child and Family and Services does. Children placed into foster care are frequently placed with their grandparents- the same grandparents who abused their parent who abuses them. Despite the fact that 88% of Chicago's DCFS' charges are black, and that only a third of Cook County residents are black, the agency tries to place the children with parents in the same racial group, leaving black children without foster parents for longer, and making their placements more desperate.
Murphy is the Cook County public guardian, meaning that he's in charge of the legal rights of young and mentally incompetant. This book is a mixture of autobiography, outrage, and suggestions for improvement of the system. The unwanted children he writes about are mostly those in Chicago, but he also mentions other metropolitan areas. This book was written in 1997 and since Murphy began his time in Chicagoland's legal system in the 60s, it contains stories and developments spanning decades. This is not a pleasant book. It isn't meant to be a pleasant book. The style of the book leads me to suspect that the readers are expected to do something to help, but what? Murphy doesn't suggest anything for the average reader to carry out. He doesn't urge readers to become foster parents. His only suggestions are for laws that politicians could make.
Unsettling reading
