Will We Save the Children?

Mayor Koch’s face stared out from the bus poster. “I want you to have my children,” the caption read, part of a stepped-up campaign to recruit badly needed foster homes. After six years of the Koch administration, its brazenness should not have shocked. Still, it did, for the photo and slogan underscored the callousness with which successive city and state administrations have treated the needs of New York City’s abused and neglected children.

“This proble...