Foster and Adopted Children Who Die From Filicide: What Can We Learn and What Can We Do?

Adoption and foster care are assumed to be safer options for children than remaining in the care of their family of origin, yet the media reports murders of these children with alarming frequency. These deaths not only are tragic but profoundly violate the public understanding of adoption and foster care. Despite the possibility of an increasing occurrence of such filicides, few states have procedures to systematically collect information on incidents of serious harm or deaths of adopted children or children in foster care. To fill this gap, this paper endeavors to illuminate characteristics of these deaths by using media accounts as an information source. The importance of such an inquiry-and its inherent limitations-calls for more attention and methods directed toward capturing data on the murders, serious abuse, and other deaths of children under governmental care. Some states and other countries (most notably the United Kingdom) have developed mechanisms for aggregating and reviewing serious harm cases to prevent such tragic and unacceptable outcomes. Several options are forwarded for use in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]