“Foster care is not a system sort of discrete unto itself, but is intimately connected with many other much more visible and expensive social safety net systems.” 

Seattle Times editorial writer and National Book Award finalist Claudia Rowe says Washington state is helping lead a national shift toward kinship care even as lawmakers struggle with rising child fatalities and broader failures in the foster care system.

Interviewed on TVW’s Inside Olympia, Rowe said foster care too often functions as “a holding system” rather than “a healing system.” She argued repeated placement changes contribute to homelessness, incarceration and long-term trauma for foster youth.

Rowe also said the most ambitious conversations about therapeutic foster care are happening largely outside legislatures, among researchers, think tanks and reform advocates.