Somebody Else's Children

Award-winning journalists Hubner and Wolfson offer a pathbreaking investigation of the family court system where over two and a half million cases are decided every year, through this examination of the day-to-day workings and life-and-death decisions in one typical family court system in Santa Clara County, California. A sunbelt boomtown, urban slum, and rural paradise all combined, Santa Clara mirrors the problems of most American cities, making it the perfect model for this...
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Award-winning journalists Hubner and Wolfson offer a pathbreaking investigation of the family court system where over two and a half million cases are decided every year, through this examination of the day-to-day workings and life-and-death decisions in one typical family court system in Santa Clara County, California. A sunbelt boomtown, urban slum, and rural paradise all combined, Santa Clara mirrors the problems of most American cities, making it the perfect model for this insightful and often harrowing chronicle which provides an intimate look at the lives of the children whose fate the court decides. This powerful book tells the personal stories of a battle between biological and adoptive parents for the right to raise a baby born drug-addicted; an eight-year-old caught in his parents' bitter divorce; and a teenage mother raising her children in a neighborhood ruled by gangs. Throughout there are the hundreds of caseworkers, judges, and social workers struggling in the trenches, trying to make the system work, trying to protect the children forgotten by society.  Clearly and engagingly written, Somebody Else's Children offers rare insight into the state of the American family today. "Powerful...A gut-wrenching book. The portraits are etched in acid.  While it may not be the kind of book all of us want to read, it certainly is the kind we should."--Washington Post