'From home to home to home,' KC Star's report on foster children featured on NPR

Illustration from The Kansas City Star

America’s children in foster care, said Kansas City Star reporter Laura Bauer, are moving “from home, to home, to home.”

“And what emerging science is showing,” she said on NPR’s Morning Edition Tuesday, “is that . . . if you get 10, 20, 30, up to 100 times that you’re being moved, that can harm your brain.”

A team of Star reporters spent most of the past year investigating the foster care system nationwide, producing a six-part series that was published this week.

NPR’s Morning Edition spoke with Bauer about the work that she said found a disturbing link between the struggling foster care system and much of the nation’s prison population.

The Star focused much of its attention on a nationwide problem in preparing foster children to move on to independent living after they age out of the system at 18.

Bauer said that many of the former foster children The Star interviewed or surveyed said, “I didn’t know what to do. Nobody was telling me how to apply for a job. Nobody was telling me how to do a resume. I was on my own.”

Many got involved in crime and drugs after leaving the system. Many went to prison.

Listen to NPR’s interview with The Star here.

Read The Star’s reporting series here.

Read about LINC’s collaboration with the state of Missouri in helping youths make successful transitions from foster care here.