Somebody Else's Children: The Courts, the Kids, and the Struggle to Save America's Troubled Families [Hardcover]

John Hubner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 14, 1997

With increasing urgency, the plight of the American family grips the national conscience. The family courts are often our society's last safety net to prevent disaster. In this penetrating expose of the inner workings of the U.S. family court system, two award-winning journalists provide an intimate look at the lives of the children whose fate it decides. 384 pp. Author publicity. 35,000 print.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Award-winning California reporters Hubner and Wolfson were given unusual access to the confidential proceedings of family court in their hometown of San Jose, Calif. The raw, unmediated portrait of the machinery of juvenile justice, which includes the voices of the families and children as well as of service providers, reveals how intricate and interconnected the problems are. In the courtroom of a juvenile judge, we view the day-to-day routine of welfare, delinquency and child-placement hearings. Writing with admirable conviction and convincing urgency, the authors make the point that the press usually ignores the system until a crisis erupts. Here their aim is to follow children and their families through shelters, courts and foster homes to see how the system really works. The thrust of this graphic report is a push for more government programs for juveniles and a plea for personal commitment through volunteering "to make somebody else's children all our children."
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Hubner, a former probation officer, and Wolfson, news columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, tackle here the complexity of the American juvenile justice system. Granted unusual access to the records of the Santa Clara County (California) Probation Department of Family and Children, they were also allowed to interview the social workers, children, and families involved in confidential court proceedings The result is a gripping narrative of juvenile case stories, "the ordinary drama that...reflects the day-to-day working of the system." It's a story of the often well-intentioned counselors, legal constraints, substance abuse, deprivation, and child and family protection gone awry. More descriptive than prescriptive, the book's overarching theme is the lack of responsible community recognition of the necessity for commitment to the healthy development of "our" kids in our society. Especially appropriate and thoughtful reading for our times; recommended for professionals, academics, politicians, and the general public.
Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Alfred
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 367 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1 edition (January 14, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517599414
• ISBN-13: 978-0517599419
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #791,676 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #63 in Books > Law > Family & Health Law > Child Advocacy

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A real-life look at the kids in the "system", June 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Somebody Else's Children: The Courts, the Kids, and the Struggle to Save America's Troubled Families (Hardcover)

Hubner and Wolfson do an excellent job of presenting the reader with the children's point of view of the juvenile court system. Children who are removed from their homes because of an abusive environment are often subjected to even worse treatment by the state-run system into which they are placed. Some of the problems that are brought to the reader's attention include: 1) Children are removed from the home based on hearsay evidence, 2) Parents must sometimes admit guilt (even if innocent) or they are accused of being in denial - this Catch-22 situation can be used to keep children separated from their parents regardless of the "facts", 3) Foster parents don't always receive adequate training, and are sometimes perpetrators of abuse. Some foster parents are only in it for the money. Yes, the system does benefit many children. But there is also a large number of children for whom the system is more abusive than the environment from which they were removed. Judge Edwards deserves a lot of credit, because he understands these issues and because he cares about the kids. Read this book at least twice.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book!, May 2, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Somebody Else's Children: The Courts, the Kids, and the Struggle to Save America's Troubled Families (Paperback)

I randomly came across this book in the library while looking up something else. I thumbed through it a bit and then ended up checking it out and taking it home, where I have proceeded to read it almost constantly over the last couple of days (with occasional breaks for comparatively less compelling things like eating, sleep, class, and hanging out with friends). I'm always a bookworm and am used to becoming absorbed in what I read. However, this is the first time in quite awhile that I've been so caught up in a book, particularly a non-fiction book.

I like this book so much because the authors worked hard at giving a thorough and unbiased look at the juvenile justice system and the kids stuck in that system. Of course, remaining completely unbiased is impossible; however, they tried to give a variety of points of view. They also tried to keep from vilifying any one group (parents, children, social workers, judges, police, the community, and so on), while still indicating the complexity of the problem. Case-studies were carefully chosen not to be sensational, but rather to exemplify the typical issues dealt with by kids in the justice system. Finally, they interspersed the information from the case studies with general information about the law, the way such cases are usually handled, and so on, then applied this new information that they had given back to the case study. This made it possible to learn a great deal about the system in general, while keeping it interesting because you could see the immediate application to one particular kid that you had learned about. This added to the book's general readability. All in all, this book is an excellent, well-written book that has the possibility of moving us a long way towards an understanding of these complex issues.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compulsively Readable, March 16, 2001

By 

Julia A. Lambson (Redlands, California USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Somebody Else's Children: The Courts, the Kids, and the Struggle to Save America's Troubled Families (Paperback)

This is a textbook of the juvenile dependency system that reads like a page-turner novel. I was unable to put it down for 2 days. The authors' treatment of their material is even-handed and true-to-life. I have worked for the past 4 years as a Court-Appointed Special Advocate and Guardian Ad Litem for these children in my local juvenile court and the cases featured in the book closely mirror the actual cases I've seen over and over again in the courts. The book raises problems in the system to which there are no easy answers, and the authors don't attempt to offer any simplistic solutions: What does the system do with severely emotionally disturbed kids who blow through one placement after another? How do you know when to give up on parents and terminate parental rights? Do you wait until the child's crucial childhood years are mostly over, waiting for the parents to get their act together? How do we place children in good homes when there is such a shortage of foster and adoptive families? I urge anyone interested to get involved with the system as a volunteer. There are over 700 advocate programs around the country and the minimum time commitment is only 12 hours a month.