The system was created to protect children, so why are so many families begging to protect their children from the system? That question keeps ringing in my head every time I hear another story about abuse, neglect, unnecessary institutionalization, family separation, or kids aging out with no real support. We are talking about children in foster homes, group homes, psychiatric facilities, and state institutions. We are talking about children whose lives should never be reduced to paperwork, placements, or profit.

This is bigger than one case and bigger than one family. Taxpayers fund these agencies, and communities pour in clothing, food, birthday gifts, Christmas gifts, and millions of dollars in charitable support because people believe children deserve care, dignity, education, and a future. But when families keep raising the same alarms, when children are silenced, and when adults are still healing from what they lived through in the system, we cannot keep looking away. If the system has nothing to hide, then transparency should never be a threat.

That is why I am calling for independent audits of how money is spent on children in state custody and independent investigations into abuse, neglect, institutional practices, and failures in preparation for adulthood. These audits must examine foster homes, group homes, psychiatric facilities, and state institutions, and they must review whether children are actually receiving the services, education, family connection, and protection they were promised. Good people in this system should want bad practices exposed too, because accountability is how children get safer.

Children are not paychecks. Disabilities are not dollar signs. A child's trauma should never become someone else's business model. Please sign this petition if you believe every child deserves protection, every family deserves transparency, and every public system caring for children must be independently audited and held accountable.