Bill Baccaglini

Child welfare professionals strive every day to keep children safe, to keep families healthy and together and break multi-generational cycles of maltreatment. More than 3 million new cases of child abuse and neglect are reported every year in the United States and more than 400,000 children are in foster care at any given time.

Last week, a New York charter school catering to children caught up in the city’s child welfare system started the new school year with almost 100 new fifth and sixth graders.

Understandably, but sometimes incorrectly, families of mentally ill patients think that because serious medical conditions are best treated at a hospital, serious mental health issues are also best treated in the same fashion, at residential facilities or in an out-patient clinical setting.