During the early 1990s, New York City had a sky-high number of kids in foster care. Now, it’s safely keeping them with their families.
Elisa Izquierdo was conceived in a Brooklyn, N.Y., homeless shelter and born with cocaine in her bloodstream in late 1980s. Her mother, Awilda Lopez, went on week-long drug binges and cashed welfare checks to feed her crack addiction. Two of Lopez’s other children lived with relatives, removed from the home by the court system.
Social workers placed Izquierdo in the custody of her father, where she remained until his death in 1994. After returning to live with her mother, school officials noticed that Izquierdo was withdrawn, walked as if recovering from an injury and had a large bruise marking her head, prompting them to call child welfare. Lopez responded by pulling her daughter out of the school. “When I asked her if she was hitting Elisa,” Izquierdo’s aunt recalls of a conversation with her sister, “she told me no, that she just punished her.”
[For more of this story, written by Chris Peak, go to http://www.care2.com/causes/wh...isnt-the-answer.html]
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