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The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.733097471
EAN: 9780679758341
ISBN: 0679758348
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 496
Publication Date: February 05, 2002
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: February 05, 2002
Studio: Vintage
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Editorial Review:
At age 12, Shirley Wilder ran away from an abusive home and landed in New York City's foster-care system. By age 13, she was named the plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit that challenged the city's 150-year-old system as unconstitutional. At 14, Shirley gave birth to a son, Lamont, who was soon swept up in the same system. This absorbing account by New York Times reporter Nina Bernstein follows the threads of the tragic lives of Shirley and Lamont Wilder and the lawsuit that bears their name. In the process it illuminates the city's--and the nation's--dysfunctional social welfare system and its impact on the children it purportedly helps.
The Wilder lawsuit was filed in 1973 by a passionate young lawyer who stuck by it through 26 years of litigation, without the case ever being fully resolved. The accusation: that New York City's system violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments for giving private religious agencies control of publicly financed foster-care beds. These mostly Catholic and Jewish agencies gave preference to white Catholic and Jewish children, while the growing numbers of black and Protestant children were sent to inappropriate institutions that left them with more problems than they had when they came. Such was the fate of Shirley, who, for lack of anywhere else to go, was placed in Hudson, a state reformatory for delinquents with no treatment services for abandoned or abused children. Hudson "looked like a camp from the outside and was unmistakably a prison within." There was rampant violence and sexual abuse, and girls were regularly punished by being put in "the hole," a 5-by-8-foot cell with no windows, furniture, or heat, which Shirley would later testify was like "Winter. Winter--all year round." But a case that named state and city officials, 77 voluntary agencies and their directors, and 84 individual defendants including nuns, rabbis, and clergymen, and that threatened to pit blacks and Jews against each other, was a case destined to enter a legal wilderness of avoidance and delay.
Shirley and Lamont's unforgettable stories reveal the deep fault lines in a system that often does more harm than good. While reforms come and go with little success, Bernstein makes clear that the child welfare system will never really change until there is a coming to terms with the system's place as "a political battleground for abiding national conflicts over race, religion, gender and inequality" and the "unacknowledged contradictions between policies that punish the 'undeserving poor' and pledge to help all needy children." --Lesley Reed
IIn 1973, a young ACLU attorney filed a controversial class-action lawsuit that challenged New York City’s operation of its foster-care system. The plaintiff was an abused runaway named Shirley Wilder who had suffered from the system’s inequities. Wilder, as the case came to be known, was waged for two and a half decades, becoming a battleground for the conflicts of race, religion, and politics that shape America’s child-welfare system.The Lost Children of Wilder gives us the galvanizing history of this landmark case and the personal story at its core. Nina Bernstein takes us behind the scenes of far-reaching legal and legislative battles, but she also traces the life of Shirley Wilder and her son, Lamont, born when Shirley was only fourteen and relinquished to the very system being challenged in her name. Bernstein’s account of Shirley and Lamont’s struggles captures the heartbreaking consequences of the child welfare system’s best intentions and deepest flaws. In the tradition of There Are No Children Here, this is a major achievement of investigative journalism and a tour de force of social observation, a gripping book that will haunt every reader who cares about the needs of children.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Sometimes There Is No Light At The End of the Tunnel
There's one word to describe this book: depressing. That doesn't mean you shouldn't read The Lost Children of Wilder, but it's so upsetting that the story will stay with you long after you've finished reading the book. In some true stories, you have the expectation of hope, even a small sliver, that things will get better. Without giving away the very moving details of the rest of Shirley Wilder's story, let me say that the story on page one is nothing compared to how sad her life becomes later ... Read More
Rating: - Required Reading for All who work with homeless & homeless youth.
This book gives you the nuts and bolts of the Wilder case. It also gives marevelous insight into the lives of youth in Foster Care. If you think you know how it all "goes down" for youth in these circumstances- read this book. This is a complex social issue that requires understanding at the individual level.
This is also great book to read for those "thinking" about a career in social work, etc.
Rating: - The Wisdom to End Foster Care and Orphanages
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Notable
The Lost Children of Wilder is a historic account of a person's plight to make changes. This book haunts me, because thirty years after the 1973 lawsuit the foster care system still has many changes to be made and the system is still allowing children to fall through the cracks and die. I cry for Shirley Wilder and Lamont. I cry and pray that as a social worker, I can make a difference and not allow children to fall through the cracks.
I'm thankful to Nina Bernstein for dedicating herself to writing ... Read More
Rating: - Spellbinding and Depressing
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 ... Read More
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