It's also interesting to understand what was going on politically at that time. In 1952 PA had put a bill out there to revamp the adoption system. Before 1954, adoptions weren't always done through the courts but children were placed into and out of the system by private agencies, many of them religious organizations. There was the Catholic Charities for Catholic children, Jewish based organizations for Jewish children, another for Methodist, Lutheran, etc. and one based on ethnicity. The Catholic Church was fighting very hard to keep the bill from passing (
June 21, 1953 Philadelphia Inquirer). Catholic Charities also took a suit all the way to the US Supreme Court to contest the adoption of a Catholic child by her Protestant Aunt and Uncle (
April 5, 1955 referencing Kuntz case). There were a large number of children in the Catholic adoption system and the caseworker load was overwhelming. It was stated in one article that each caseworker handled over 65 children each, and that each child in foster care could only be checked in on once a month. Facilities were overrun with children and there were ads placed asking for families to take in children (
May 24, 1955;
Dec 7, 1955, Philadelphia Inquirer ads ). And there was money. Each child received $14 from the state per week for care. When a child was fostered, the foster family and the agency placing the child shared that money (
Jan 30, 1955, Phildelphia Inquirer). That's a lot of money. And the agency was responsible for doing background checks on the families they placed the children with. The big thing the Catholic Church was pushing was child safety. In fact the Archbishop (O'Hara) stated "Catholic Institutions have maintained the highest standards of childcare in the commonwealth for over 150 years" (
Philadelphia Inquirer June 23, 1953). Yet the reason this bill was proposed was to end black market baby selling and children being lost in the foster care system.
The long and short of this is, at the time Joseph was adopted the system was going through some huge changes. In an effort to stop black market babies, PA had proposed Bill 480. The religious organizations were fighting it. The caseworkers at these organizations were overwhelmed, children were desperately seeking temporary shelter with local families and IMO it would have been very easy for a child to simply slip through the cracks. Additionally, these religious organizations were under incredible scrutiny and pressure to appear safe. My opinon is that Joseph was in an emergency foster home placement with a family that needed money and he probably wasn't the only child in the home. One child out of 10,000 suddenly isn't there? I'm not sure a caseworker would have noticed.
