Somebody Else's Children: The Courts, the Kids, and the Struggle to Save America's Troubled Families

Award-winning California reporters Hubner and Wolfson were given unusual access to the confidential proceedings of family court in their hometown of San Jose, Calif. The raw, unmediated portrait of the machinery of juvenile justice, which includes the voices of the families and children as well as of service providers, reveals how intricate and interconnected the problems are. In the courtroom of a juvenile judge, we view the day-to-day routine of welfare, delinquency and child-placement hearings. Writing with admirable conviction and convincing urgency, the authors make the point that the press usually ignores the system until a crisis erupts. Here their aim is to follow children and their families through shelters, courts and foster homes to see how the system really works. The thrust of this graphic report is a push for more government programs for juveniles and a plea for personal commitment through volunteering ""to make somebody else's children all our children."" (Jan.)