Special Episode

Invisible Kids: America’s Journey from Orphanages to Foster Care

Ravi and Rikki dive into the deep end of the programs that are meant to care for the country’s most vulnerable children: the child-welfare system. First, Ravi interviews journalist and author Dr. Christine Kenneally. Her new book "Ghosts of the Orphanage: A Story of Mysterious Deaths, a Conspiracy of Silence, and a Search for Justice” tells survivors’ traumatic stories of abuse from inside a Catholic orphanage in Vermont. Then, Rikki interviews Dr. Sarah Font, an Associate Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Penn State who specializes her research on child abuse and neglect, foster care, and state intervention. Rikki and Sarah get to the bottom of the good, bad, and ugly of our current foster care system and what we can do to care for children who have nowhere else to go.

SHOW NOTES

DR. CHRISTINE KENNEALLY [03:15]

Ghosts of the Orphanage: A Story of Mysterious Deaths, a Conspiracy of Silence, and a Search for Justice (Dr. Christine Kenneally, 3/21/23)

Dr. Sarah Font [47:56]

An Institution That’s Been Broken for 200 Years (The Atlantic, 4/12/23)

Foster Kids Need Permanent Homes (The Wall Street Journal, 3/23/23)