Unheard Voices of the Child Welfare System
A Together with Families Blog
Meet Halle
Our blog’s editor and anchor. A storyteller who lived it, she helps our families tell their truth. Halle shapes each story with clarity and power — but the heart always comes straight from the families themselves.
Families impacted by the child welfare system are raising their voices here.
On our blog, parents, relatives, and children tell their stories—of love, struggle, and the fight to prevent foster care.
To Georgia Lawmakers: Families Who Are Struggling Are Not Broken. The System Is.
There is something deeply wrong happening in our state.
Not in the homes of “bad parents.” Not in the families who don’t love their kids. But in the system that claims to protect children — while quietly tearing them away from the very people who love them most.
Open Letter: Georgia, This Federal Civil Rights Lawsuit Is Our Chance to Make It Right
She opened the letter as her heart raced. Another bill. Another reminder that her children were gone. This one demanded over $16,000 in back “child support” — for the five children ripped from her arms and shuffled from placement to placement in foster care, one already aged out and lost to time. Children she would never tuck into bed again. Children whose childhoods were stolen because their mother was poor and homeless. And at the bottom of the page, the words that shattered her all over again: if she didn’t pay, she could go to jail.
A Sister’s Story from Within the Child Welfare System
I never imagined I would have to fight so hard just to be a sister. Since day one, I have been there for my siblings. I have cared for them, protected them, loved them, and stood by their side through life’s ups and downs. But when the child welfare system stepped in, everything changed. What was supposed to be a system that helps families has instead pulled mine apart and left me with wounds that still haven’t healed.