The psychiatric facility that treated her at thirteen was doing the work it was designed to do, however imperfectly. She has described her ambivalence about the period with honesty — the sense of being warehoused as much as treated, the uncertainty about whether her difficulties were genuinely psychiatric or primarily situational, the relief of a structure that was at least consistently present even if it was not always appropriate. Whatever its limitations, the hospitalization was an intervention in a trajectory that might otherwise have ended much worse.
The California court that granted her emancipation at fourteen was, similarly, doing its job. It assessed a specific situation and made a specific determination. Whether that determination was correct in her case is a question that Drew herself has answered: she has said it was necessary, that it enabled her to begin the process of becoming her own person. The court did what courts are designed to do.
What was largely absent was the kind of sustained, reliable, unconditional adult support that children require and that institutional structures are not well designed to provide. The people who came closest to offering it — the Crosby-Dance household, certain professional colleagues who provided genuine mentorship, the partnership with Nancy Juvonen that gave her professional support and genuine friendship — were not institutional actors. They were individuals who showed up in her life and chose to be present in ways that made a difference.
This pattern — the failure of institutions, the importance of specific human relationships — is recognizable from accounts of how people navigate difficult circumstances more broadly. Institutions create structures; humans create connection. Both matter, but the connection is often what determines whether the structures are enough.