A few years ago, I had the privilege of working on a research project with Dakota Roundtree-Swain, then an undergraduate student at the college where I work. We examined the recollections of young adults who had been in out-of-home care about their experiences with participating in decision-making while in care. The study participants talked about their removal from family, placement in care, and parental visitations (Križ and Roundtree-Swain, 2017). Joseph, an African-American young man who was pursuing a college degree at the time of the interview, said that when he was 12, he had called the local public child protection agency and reported being abused by his mother. He was subsequently placed in a foster home. Joseph described several situations when his opinion had not been heard by his child protection caseworkers. For example, the child protection agency wanted to reunite Joseph with his mother when he was 14. Joseph did not want to live with his mother, though, and told his case workers so, but he was returned to her anyway. He felt that the workers did not take his wish seriously because of his age:

Joseph thought that the caseworkers perceived him as a problem that needed fixing. He described the child protection system as a factory treating children in care as objects that are produced in an automated, identical fashion, as if on an assembly line. He explained: ‘I’ve always looked at foster care as a factory: … we are merchandise on this conveyor belt’ (Križ and Roundtree-Swain, 2017, p 32).

Joseph's powerful words about his experiences in care were the motivation to write this book. Dakota's and my project showed that the study participants’ experiences with participation in child protectionrelated processes varied widely.