Our Kids - Resolve Philly

A community journalism project dedicated to exploring the foster care system, prioritizing community involvement and conducted with an unprecedented level of thoroughness not previously seen in media coverage of this topic.

Steve Volk is Resolve’s solutions investigative editor who leads this project. Our Kids is funded with support from the Stoneleigh Foundation.

How Philly can look to New Jersey to fix its child welfare system

The problems bedeviling Philadelphia’s child welfare system — too many kids in foster care, worker vacancies, and lawsuits stemming from child injuries and deaths — have all steadily waned in […]

Inside Philly’s hidden foster care system, where parents ‘voluntarily’ give up their children

Philly removes neglected children from homes to keep them safe. But they often face worse abuse in foster care placements.

Philly still keeps the benefits of foster care youths despite a 2022 law

Investigative Reporter Steve Volk at Resolve's Our Kids Panel in Sept 2023

Q&A with Investigative Editor, Steve Volk

What is Our Kids? Our Kids is a community journalism project that covers the foster care system with a thoroughness that the media hasn’t previously displayed toward this subject, with […]

Philly took $5 million in foster children’s Social Security payments

That money, however, was being collected by Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services.

Bill would bar Philly from keeping Social Security payments…

Gym’s legislation would end the practice, requiring the city to save the money for the youths…

In the Child Welfare System, Black Families Should Matter

“I was like, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong. You know that now, and you’re still keeping my kids?’”

Philly still keeps the benefits of foster care youths despite a 2022 law banning the practice

Despite the city’s new law, DHS acknowledges it’s still keeping the money meant for foster kids — about $1.3 million in Social Security benefits for 380 children in a typical year.

In 2020, Steve received an assignment to cover the foster care system. No one told him how difficult it would be: reluctant sources, an opaque bureaucracy tucked behind privacy barriers, decades of problematic media coverage to understand and overcome. These guides are meant to help anyone interested in writing about the system to avoid a lot of the pitfalls that consumed him at the start.