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> Bluntly put, when an institution is given power over children, more than that of a family, and the auditing is lax, you're gonna get maltreatment, and from th

> Bluntly put, when an institution is given power over children, more than that of a family, and the auditing is lax, you're gonna get maltreatment, and from there unmarked graves. Families are not particularly safe. Systems that pulled children from their family for placement in a "correct" family created similar horror stories and the natural families of many are also horror stories. Air crashes are more notable than auto-crashes despite being less likely per passenger. Similarly, even if institutions fail at 1/10th the rate of placement in families, notable news will still paint us the opposite picture.

AbrahamParangi 5y ago
Is this actually true that families are less or equivalently as safe as institutional living though? At least one study found that rates of abuse in foster homes are ~4x higher than in other homes.
wyager 5y ago
Biological family are the only people in the world who manifestly have real “skin in the game” with respect to ensuring the proper treatment of their children. For almost everyone else, especially in institutional settings, there are always other considerations that come before the welfare of individual children.
at_a_remove 5y ago
I am not disagreeing with you on families. My point is about oversight, and graves. Here, recently, we had a case of some missing kids where the children were killed and buried in the back yard. The difference is that there was a swiftness in catching them. Or that little girl that was starved to death by her parents near to me -- again, caught. When it is an institution, there are no external checks on that institution, and so you get these mass graves and by the time people clue in, the perpetrators are dead. My point is that if you're the one auditing your own books, you can get away with a lot, for a long long time, and sometimes that means retiring with having gotten away with it.

AbrahamParangi 5y ago

Is this actually true that families are less or equivalently as safe as institutional living though? At least one study found that rates of abuse in foster homes are ~4x higher than in other homes.

wyager 5y ago

Biological family are the only people in the world who manifestly have real “skin in the game” with respect to ensuring the proper treatment of their children. For almost everyone else, especially in institutional settings, there are always other considerations that come before the welfare of individual children.

at_a_remove 5y ago

I am not disagreeing with you on families. My point is about oversight, and graves. Here, recently, we had a case of some missing kids where the children were killed and buried in the back yard. The difference is that there was a swiftness in catching them. Or that little girl that was starved to death by her parents near to me -- again, caught. When it is an institution, there are no external checks on that institution, and so you get these mass graves and by the time people clue in, the perpetrators are dead. My point is that if you're the one auditing your own books, you can get away with a lot, for a long long time, and sometimes that means retiring with having gotten away with it.