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How Philly can look to New Jersey to fix its child welfare system
By The Philadelphia Inquirer, Resolve Philly, Julie Christie, | April 11, 2025
Stoneleigh Fellow Steve Volk has published part 3 of his 3-part series in The Philadelphia Inquirer covering Philadelphia’s foster care system.
The problems bedeviling Philadelphia’s child welfare system — too many kids in foster care, worker vacancies, and lawsuits stemming from child injuries and deaths — have all steadily waned in New Jersey in the last two decades. So what can Philly learn from the Garden State?
In the 1990s, New Jersey’s child welfare system was among the worst in the nation, with too few caseworkers for the number of kids in need. Workers had to constantly scramble, sometimes cutting corners and overlooking children in real danger.
Today, New Jersey looms as a leading example of foster care reform by recognizing earlier than many others the folly of separating thousands of youths from families that, in hindsight, only needed resources and support.
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