To simulate home, or something close to it - that is, to protect and care for children who, for whatever reason, have lost their parents - we have, over the centuries, institutionalized the kind of foster care that used to happen organically within communities back when mom or dad could die suddenly of plague or influenza, or in a coal mine or a wheat field.

Since those ad hoc days, foster care has grown into a rather sprawling industry. Washington Children's Administration, the state's lead child agency, operates with a $530 million budget and some 2,500 employees, most of them social workers who monitor kids in more than 5,100 state foster homes. There's also a vast private ecosystem of nonprofit groups, specializing in everything from high-end research to baking birthday cakes for foster kids.

A team of Crosscut writers ventured into this world to explore the people, programs, policies, philosophies and, most importantly, the kids and families the system was invented to help: What's working? What's not? How does the system help families stay together? How does it create healthy homes away from home for kids whose families fall apart? "Normalize" a foster kid's life? (It shouldn't take 48 hours and a judge's order to attend a sleepover.) What puts our children "at risk?" And what is "at-risk" anyway?

These are the stories they carried back.

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