At any given time, about 28,000 children are in the state’s care after being removed from abusive or neglectful homes. Like Greenwood’s daughter, those children often suffer from a combination of emotional and physical trauma. How to take care of them is a perennially vexing question for the state’s troubled foster care system.
One possible answer is an up-and-coming clinical model that aims to treat children’s emotional trauma as a medical condition. As lawmakers consider reforms to an embattled child welfare agency, state officials are pinning hopes on a handful of clinics around the state, aimed exclusively at foster children, where mental health services would be included at every point of a child’s medical treatment.
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