Booting big government

What do you do with a massive, inefficient foster-care system that reports thousands of children killed, abused, or simply "lost" while under the state's care? If you're Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, you privatize the whole thing, turning the sytem over to local nonprofits and faith-based groups | Bob Jones

The brightly painted halls of SafePlace are mostly quiet on a Wednesday afternoon, except for the squeals of delight coming from the playroom. There, two little boys are sitting in bean-bag chairs racing motorcycles across the desert in a rich video game.

Surrounded by stuffed animals and cartoon posters, the boys seem happy and carefree. Judging from their smiles, you'd never know they are about to become a statistic: two more kids entering the child welfare system in Broward County, Fla.—two out of 1,000, if this year is like most.

If the boys seem happy on their first day as wards of the state, they can thank 4Kids of South Florida, the faith-based nonprofit organization that established SafePlace as the entry point for new children coming into the system. With its happy colors and homey feeling, SafePlace tries to be warm and welcoming for kids going through a traumatic time. Before SafePlace, children would simply sit in a cubicle next to a strange adult, listening to increasingly desperate phone calls as social workers tried to find a foster home with an empty bed in the third-fastest-growing state in the nation.