Stuck Kids: How Foster Youth End up In Hospitals for Months

Last week, the Baltimore Sun’s Jean Marbella reported on a lawsuit filed on behalf of youth in the state’s foster care system who had been left in hospital wards with no plan for a return to the community. 

While the lawsuit focuses on events in the past two years, this has been a problem for far longer than that in Maryland. In 2022, we were joined by Erin Dorrien and Carrie Etheridge to discuss this exact issue of kids getting stuck in the hospital well after anyone thinks they need to be there.

Dorrien and Etheridge explained exactly how and why this had become such a challenge in Maryland’s child welfare system, and what they were hoping the legislature could do to improve the situation. Today we are re-releasing that interview. 

Erin Dorrien is an associate principal at Health Management Associates. At the time this interview was recorded, she was vice president of policy for the Maryland Hospital Association. Carrie Etheridge is the director of social work at Sheppard Pratt.

Original release date: May 2, 2022

Reading Room

144 Maryland Foster Children Were Stuck in Hospitals, Sometimes for Months, after Doctors Cleared Them

https://www.baltimoresun.com/2026/01/15/foster-care-hospitals-children/

Maryland H.B. 406: Children in Out-Of-Home Placements
https://bit.ly/3P1Xp6y

Stranded in the ER: Can California Change its Treatment of Kids in Crisis?
https://bit.ly/3B41pMu