It's the one time of year when the lucky think the unlucky are not also undeserving. So the Hillsborough County Children's Board and the Tampa office of the Department of Children and Families seized the moment last week to drop their bomb and rattle our collective conscience. They declared the county's foster care system is in worse shape than ever. Twelve hundred children in a county of nearly a million people live in such dangerous circumstances they've been taken from their parents. But they have no place to go.
Foster homes are so overcrowded as many as a dozen kids are in one house.
Not just kids. So the two agencies organized a meeting to make a public plea for help. They sent invitations to the usual suspects, the cobweb of non-profit agencies that work with troubled kids. They also invited executives of Hillsborough County's top businesses and biggest employers. The usual suspects showed up.