A report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union titled “If I Wasn’t Poor, I Wouldn’t Be Unfit” The Family Separation Crisis in the US Child Welfare System included a discussion of the beginnings of the foster system in their report about reducing the harmful impact of child welfare interventions. In the discussion about the nineteenth century Orphan Train Movement—which sent over 250,000 children, mostly Irish, Catholic, immigrant, and poor, from East Coast urban centers to Protestant families in the Midwest—Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union cited Chantal’s commentary, A Feature, Not a Bug: The Foster System’s History of Othering, which discussed the early history of the foster system and how it negatively treated low-income children and families of color.

Read the full Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union report here.

Read Chantal’s full commentary here.