On any given day, about half a million children are living in foster care. They've been removed from violent or abusive households; many suffer physical and mental health problems that have gone untreated.
Their need is acute but the response is often dangerously slow, according to a policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics. The recommendations, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, are intended as a wake-up call for pediatricians who care for foster kids.
According to the report, more than 70 percent of these children have a documented history of child abuse or neglect, and 80 percent have been exposed to significant violence, including domestic violence. Almost all are further traumatized by being removed from their families, says author Moira Szilagyi, a professor of pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Foster care becomes a "window of opportunity for healing," Szilagyi says, often the first chance these children have to get the help they need.
[For more of this story, written by Patti Neighmond, go to http://www.npr.org/sections/he...ng-to-see-the-doctor]
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