PROFESSOR RICHARD GELLES (University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work): Keeping the family intact is a long-term cultural bias and its supported by the Constitution, which gives parents a great deal of freedom to raise children without government interference.

ROLLIN: That bias, says Gelles, can lead case workers to err on the side of what is called family preservation.

PROFESSOR GELLES: I really do believe that even the better trained social workers are not cautious enough, that they feel that "if I bring my good intentions and the resources of the system to bare," most people will want to be good parents and will change. The scientific reality is that change is a difficult process.

ROLLIN (to Ms. Jones): Are we sometimes sentimental about a mother's instincts?

MS. JONES: Absolutely. I think most of us think everyone wants to parent and who would not want to parent, particularly mothers? There's what's called a mother's instinct and it will just kick in sooner or later and that's not the case. And I think it's hard for us to recognize that and accept that.

ROLLIN: Especially, says Gelles, if the worker is overworked and inexperienced.

PROFESSOR GELLES: Carrying out these tasks frequently are youngsters who are called social workers but who are not, who have not been professionally trained in social work, who are at the bottom rung of the system, are paid very poorly, and are required to make decisions that they don't have the technology or the knowledge or the training to make.

ROLLIN: Children who are removed from their homes are placed with relatives, or foster families, or in a group home like this. More than half a million children are in foster care in America -- 2000 in this one county in Georgia. For most of them, foster care is, at least, a safer place than home. Still, most are returned to their homes and of those, 40 percent wind up back in foster care -- older now, their chances of adoption fading. Warrell is one of 11 children, all in foster care.

WARRELL: I got to wait until my mother get her life straight and whatever she's got to do right now, she can do it now, while I'm here.

ROLLIN: Federal legislation now mandates, that with some exceptions, that after 12 months in foster care, a decision must be made either to return a child to the family or to terminate parental rights.

MS. JONES: Is it realistic to expect them in 12 months to be all together? All my substance abuse experts will tell you "no." But, they are trying. Do you go forward and terminate their rights or do you give them more time?

ROLLIN (to Ms. Jones): Because more time can mean that the child doesn't get adopted?

MS. JONES: That's right.

ROLLIN: Meanwhile, foster care is the only option for most of these children. If they are lucky, the foster care is neither long-term, nor itself, as it is in isolated cases, abusive.

TERRELL (16-year-old boy): I feel safer here because I don't have to worry about whether my parents are going to get drunk or hurt me or my little sister.

ROLLIN: The goal is to close Kim's case by the fall. Whichever way it goes, the caseworker says she will not rest easy.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I'm Betty Rollin in Atlanta.