Customer Reviews

The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care

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The Lost Children of Wilder is a book that is long overdue. Bernstein captures the insidious machinations of the NYC foster care system that purports to care for the well-being of all its homeless, indigent, and too often parentless children, irrespective of their race, creed or religion. I know of the systematic abuse of the NYC foster care system because I was number 1811513 who was serviced out of the Brooklyn Bureau of Social service and Children's Aid Society at 285 Schermerhorn Street. Bernstein has accomplished a herculean task by lifting an airtight lid on an epic silence to speak truth for the many children, like myself, who at a time in our lives were both invisible and voiceless. Rev. Irene Monroe Harvard Divinity School.

I recently read this book. I have been a foster care case worker in New York City for four years and I iddentified with both sides of the Wilder case. Shirley adn her son, as well as millions of other children should have been given more than they were, they were forgotten and basically 'thrown away' by the foster care system. BUT, on the other hand, the agencies, the good agencies are only given SO much, and more agencies and services MUST be created, not should be, to beter service the children and their families. This is an excellent book, very down to earth, yet detailed. I highly recommend it.

Nina Bernstein's compelling account of the generations of children trapped in the child welfare system kept me up late turning pages...and gave me nightmares of the thousands and thousands of children who are still churning through an overtaxed foster care system that our society doesn't seem to care about. Still almost every week there's another horror story of an abused or neglected kid that fell through the cracks of the "system."
This is an absolutely amazing, and realistic account, of what long-term public interest litigation is like. The world needs more people like Marcia Robinson Lowry to fight on behalf of kids, and more journalists like Nina Bernstein, willing to put under bright light the shortcomings that our local governments would rather have swept under the rug.

Even though I have had no personal contact with the foster care system, I found the book fascinating as it concurrently details the trial against the system and the private trials of the Wilder family. While reading the book my heart went out not only to the Wilders in the story but the countless, nameless children that are wrapped in a system that is inadequate at best, and often very dangerous, both physically and emotionally. What struck me particularly hard throughout the book, is the reality that there are so many children that have nowhere to turn. We as a society need to find better ways to help these children, who through no fault of their own are so helpless. In order to change the system it is imperitive that we understand the problem, and the book does a wonderful job of describing the circumstances children in our foster care system face every day. I believe that religion should be a choice whenever possible, so that the child maintains some contact with a lifestyle familiar to him/her, but I also believe that communities that have a higher proportion of foster care children should be assisted to develop quality programs as well.

This well-written epic study of New York's foster care system reads like a novel. Indeed, the fascinating details about three generations of foster children kept me reading and reading; the book is a cliff-hanger in a way non-fiction seldom is. Shirley and Lamont's compelling stories not only reveal little-known aspects of welfare history, but provide a window of what the sad future may look like if President Bush succeeds with his faith-based welfare initiatives.

In 1973 the New York ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of 13 year old Shirley Wilder. Young, unable to cope with an abusive home, Shirley is in the foster care system and in danger of getting lost. At age 14 she gives birth to a son, Lamont, and is forced to turn him over to the same system that has failed her so miserably. What follows is a spellbinding (though long winded)account of the suit and the human faces behind it. Shirley never raises her son, as she had hoped. Lamont is sent spinning through foster care. Seemigly safe with his first family, his life is soon to be upended by good intentioned, badly informed people. This is a heartwrenching story of the cost in human terms of our country's inability to care for its children. I think I was most astonished by the fact that these things happen in this day and age, how unwilling and unable the system is to care and protect the most vunerable. There are no winners, just heartbreak and regret. The lawsuit also takes on a life of its own, bogged down in incredible red tape, appeals, and legalese. The suit's final conclusion is an afterthought... If it makes you frustrated as on onlooker,you can imagine it must be a living hell to depend upon this system and try to navigate it.

This is an incredible book. Beautifully written and thoroughly researched, it seamlessly weaves the story of a family trapped in New York City's foster care system, the history of foster care in New York, and the struggle of a small group of dedicated lawyers who wanted to make a difference. It should be required reading for anyone who works with kids, especially in a legal context. Bernstein provides an objective but devastating critique of the City's failed efforts to help the neediest children in New York, as well as a moving story about the people behind the statistics. I've recommended it to many friends.

As a former staffer at NYC's Administration for Children's Services and legal intern at the Legal Aid Society's Juvenile Rights Division, I cannot recommend Bernstein's The Lost Children of Wilder enough. She masterfully weaves together the complex history and politics of child welfare reform efforts into a sophisticated account of the Wilder lawsuit and its impact on the system it was launched to alter. Lest the story of conflicting laws, bureaucratic incentive structures, powerbrokers, advocacy groups, administrations and child-serving agencies is not compelling enough, Bernstein's account of the litigation follows the travails of plaintiff, Shirley Wilder as she wanders through life and the system virtually unaffected by the lawsuit that bears her name. The Lost Children is a must-read for those concerned about reforming child-serving systems, seasoned veterans and newcomers alike.

Once read, it might behoove caring persons to consider whether foster care and orphanages are proper environments for children whose parents are living, and whether even extended relatives are preferable to "kennel care" offered to humans, must less "sentenced" to them. In a modern age, if society cannot cope with the problems and the harms that occur with unwanted children, it's possible that we have been traveling down the wrong social path for some time. Examining the extent to which these environments are necessary, and damaging to children, it might be possible that alternative perspectives might provide solutions that are more family friendly, and salvage responsible, rather than to subject children to these emotionally detached and wrenching environments. It's possible we have been delusional for far too long in recognition of the fact that children are not as resilient as we tend to think they are, and that they were provided with two parents for that reason, because they need the protection, love and nurturing of parents, not just adult strangers. If we consider that it is unhealthy for mental health patients to be warehoused (if we can avoid it), why do we do it with children?

A deeply moving and profound book that details the history of child welfare in New York through the life of the lead plaintiff in a historic legal case. The Wilder lawsuit challenged the very foundation of the system -- its reliance on religion to provide care, and the resulting racial discrimination against Black Protestant children. The book tells the 26-year-history of the case, its main players and the very troubling story of Shirley Wilder. It is Shirley's voice, and that of her son, and finally grandson that make the book particularly memorable--a reminder that in every public policy there are lives at stake. It is particularly important at a time when these issues are being debated again on the national stage.