I've worked with homeless kids, kids in foster care, and I've never met a kid who couldn't be reached.

I have spent a lot of time with foster children over the years - kids for whom I have not necessarily acted as a foster parent.

The most violent and troubling stories become part of our national consciousness about foster care.

I'm missing work. We didn't have enough money for preschool. I had a panic attack. I couldn't do it. I became one of those horrible foster parents who give the kids back.

We were pressured to accept kids we were not qualified to handle. And we do that to people all the time, which is why we don't have enough foster parents.

I am not only the person who wrote and sold a novel while raising a houseful of biological and foster children; I am also the person who wrote a horrific young adult novel that never sold and gave up on a foster child I couldn't handle - an experience that still haunts me.