Making a Success of Foster Care

Britain's model of child protection and foster care (which sounds a lot like ours) is compared to Germany's:

Almost three quarters of [children in foster care] will leave care with no formal qualifications. Only one per cent will go on to enter any kind of university education. One fifth of looked-after children are homeless two years after leaving care; 25 per cent of our prison population has been through the care system. Things have to be really bad at home before care looks like a better option.

Yet in other countries the picture is very different. In Germany looked-after children do extremely well, with 95 per cent of children in the German care system going on to vocational education. Crime committed by looked-after children in Germany runs at 5 per cent of the rate of crime committed by those in our care.

This comes at a price:

Money is important. In Germany most looked-after children live in small community homes, with fewer than 16 residents. By contrast, more than two-thirds of our looked-after children are placed in foster families which cost less than a quarter of a residential placement in Germany.

But as compared to the up-front cost of effective foster care, are diminished productivity among foster care graduates and increased cost of incarceration the proverbial "pound of cure"?

Something We May Never Get Right....

Today's Washington Post calls for reforms in the foster care system, noting, "On average, children entering foster care languish in the system for three years, shuttled through three different placements.". The Post suggests that this results in part from "a federal system that creates perverse financial incentives for states to place and leave children in foster care rather than preventing them from entering the system or enabling them to exit more quickly". The Post suggests permitting states to shift some federal money designated to foster care to other programs, such as family preservation services or adoption promotion and support, to make federal adoption assistance available to all children regardless of the incomes of their birth parents, or to provide financial assistance to legal guardians in addition to adoptive parents.

The ideas aren't bad, but the problem goes beyond money. The Post seems to assume that because the federal government adds money to certain programs, states are limited in their ability to fund other programs. There can be some truth to that with federal matching funds, but states have engaged in creative bookkeeping for years - and are rather adept at shifting money from one program (which receives considerable federal funds) to another (which does not).

The issue of "reforming foster care", or "reforming child protective law", comes up every few years. The difficult issues involved - protecting children, improving parental competence and working toward reunification, providing appropriate placements for children in foster care or with family members, resolving the clouds of uncertainty over the future of a child in foster care, arranging and achieving successful adoptions of children whose parents have had their parental rights terminated - get discussed. But nobody wants to commit the type of manpower and resources which would truly be necessary to effect significant change. So policies are shifted, budgets are adjusted, and most things go on as before.

The Post probably views its position as "realistic" - suggesting that our political leaders play around with the money presently in the program, rather than calling upon them to commit new funds and resources - but that "realism" perhaps also reflects why things aren't likely to change.