No. 14
March 24, 1999
By Doug Bandow*

Introduction

For all the concern over welfare reform and the well being of children, scant attention has been paid to what is perhaps a more disturbing form of child poverty—the lack of a loving family. The resulting dearth of care, discipline, and stability can wield far more devastating consequences than the material want usually defined as poverty. Unfortunately, foster care—for kids who lack adequate and safe homes—has of necessity become a major component of the welfare system.

According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, some 650 thousand children—up 50 percent from a decade ago—spent at least part of 1997 in foster care. The American Public Welfare Association estimates that half of young people end up in foster care because of abusive or neglectful parents; one-fifth are removed from homes where parents are incapacitated (addicted to drugs, ill, or jailed). Other kids have committed a juvenile offense, such as truancy, or suffer from a disability. Today, more children are entering than leaving the system.

Children who have spent time in the foster-care system generally do poorer in school and on the job. They are also ultimately more likely to be dependent on government, either on welfare or in jail. Overall, their prospects for a bright future are diminished. Federal and state lawmakers need to craft solutions to compassionately and efficiently place these children in loving homes.

Rapid Growth

According to the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago, which has monitored foster care in six states: "The prevailing trend in all six states for more than a decade has been one of significant growth in the numbers of children receiving state-supported care." Occasional short-term reductions "have been more than offset by periods of rapid growth."

California, Illinois, and New York comprise three of those six states. They, along with Pennsylvania, have the largest foster-care populations, alone accounting for 42 percent of the total in 1996. Although the experience of individual states is obviously very different, many states across the nation are facing rapid growth in their foster-care caseload.

Why the Dramatic Increase?

One reason for the significant expansion involves legislative standards for removal from families, as well as caseworker and court application of those standards in particular cases. The rapid rise in the number of cases of presumed abuse or neglect may reflect, in part, the fact that people are more aware of the problem of child abuse and, therefore, more ready to report potential abusers. Rising drug abuse levels may also play a role. Another factor may be changing definitions, since it is not clear that Americans have become dramatically worse parents in recent years.

Brigitte Berger of Wellesley College notes that the most dramatic increase—a more than doubling—in rate of placement in foster care occurred between 1963 and 1977, during which time the concept of child abuse and neglect expanded and statistical reporting was formalized. Particularly important is the role of neglect, which accounts for more than half of reported cases of alleged maltreatment, and which is more ambiguous than physical and sexual abuse.

An additional factor is the failure to expeditiously get kids out of the system. The growing caseload, report Conna Craig and Derek Herbert of the Institute for Children, "has been influenced more by declines in exit rates than increases in the number of children entering care."

When Temporary Becomes Long Term

Foster care is intended to be temporary. Children are placed with foster parents (sometimes relatives) or in group homes. Unfortunately, however, for many children foster care has become essentially permanent.

One child in ten is caught in the system for longer than 7.4 years. One-quarter are in foster care for 4.3 or more years. Those tagged for adoption spend, on average, four to six years in the system. Those brought into the foster-care system today tend to stay longer than they would have in the past. One important factor is age.

"Infants and young children are the fastest growing age groups in the foster-care population," reports the Chapin Hall Center. "They are entering care in greater numbers than other groups, and tend to remain in foster care longer." Recidivism is also rampant. One-third of foster children returned to their families end up back in public care. In many cases, family reunification is impossible.

Furthermore, adoption is uncommon, and when it occurs, it is slow. For example, in 1996, the overall adoption rate in California, the state with the largest foster care population, was just four percent. The median time from entry in the system to adoption is nearly three years. In California, more children typically either "age out" or run away than are adopted. Nationwide, the problem of children cast adrift into the foster-care system needs to be addressed at both ends.

Entry and Exit

Today the decision at the initial entry point is particularly important since children have such a difficult time leaving. The law and its application need to be reviewed to assure that the government is taking the right children from the right families at the right times.

Equally obvious is the need for reform at the discharge level. Social welfare agencies tend to prefer to expend resources on services and monitoring activities. However, the state should move to both more quickly end parental rights of abusive parents and more effectively promote adoption when children are eligible for placement.

Parental Rights

Perhaps the most difficult issue involves more quickly extinguishing parental rights. Obviously this is not a decision to make lightly. Too great a willingness to act risks wrongly breaking apart families and placing children in worse situations.

But despite the temptation to emphasize family preservation, experience indicates that parents who are incapacitated by serious alcohol/drug problems or mental illness or who abuse their children are unlikely to change sufficiently to be able to care for their children. Services such as parenting education have been found to have only limited efficacy.

In practice, few of the more severely abused children are returned home for a first time; fewer still end up permanently at home. Thus, it is critical to concentrate preservation assistance on families that seem most capable of reconstruction, while exhibiting less patience with the others. Reports Oregon’s Child Welfare Partnership: "The ability to accurately predict which families are more likely to seriously abuse or neglect their children, which families will participate in services, and which families will benefit from reunification efforts is crucial to maximizing agency resources and assuring children are safe from abuse and neglect."

To the extent that reunification efforts are open-ended, current policy sacrifices the interest of children to those of biological parents who have no wish to be real parents. That children suffer most is evident from the reality that one-third who are returned to their families end up back in the system. A more frightening statistic is that, according to information provided by 16 states (many do not collect the relevant numbers), 41 percent of children killed by parents between 1995 and 1997 had contact with child protective services. Indeed, it is fair neither to parents nor children to allow the process to drag on for years. But the ultimate termination standard should be the child’s welfare rather than the parents’.

Where it is evident that parental rights must be ended, states should act expeditiously. States could, for instance, set stricter limits on the time allowed biological parents to meet the conditions necessary for them to reclaim their children.

Adoption and Permanent Placement

Next is the need to more quickly get kids eligible for adoption and out of foster care. Observe Craig and Herbert: "Since no program can ever replace the love and commitment of a caring family, the ultimate goal must be a permanent home for every one of America’s children."

There are a number of pieces to the puzzle. States should set a goal—a year is most commonly proposed—for getting children into a permanent home.

Abandoned children could be made eligible for adoption through private agencies without first being put into foster care. Most important, states should emphasize adoption. They should simultaneously remove artificial (such as race-based) restrictions on adoption, mandate that foster care agencies place children for adoption immediately after the termination of parental rights, and transform institutional incentives to encourage adoptions. At a bureaucratic level states should look at how social service agencies and courts handle foster-care cases.

Privatization

Particularly fruitful would be privatization of adoption services, with the state government contracting with private agencies to place children in adoptive homes. The goal is not simply greater efficiency. It is to improve the quality of life for children at all stages of foster care. That is, privatization offers the hope of getting children out of the system quicker and providing better care for them while they are in foster care.

This approach would not be a leap into the unknown. To the contrary, a number of states have begun to transform their antiquated foster-care systems by turning to the private sector, usually contracting out some or all operations.

For instance, earlier this decade, Kansas turned to private agencies, contracting out almost all foster-care services, including adoption, family preservation, and foster care. At the same time, legislators set performance standards higher than those previously applied to the state government. Legislators also adjusted the payment system, offering a simple, one-time rate irrespective of how long the child remained in the program.

Contractors had a strong incentive to place kids quickly, since after seven or eight months they would begin to lose money.

Private operators quickly demonstrated their superiority over the old state monopoly. They were innovative and flexible. Competition forced greater efficiency and accountability; contractors seeking to place children also generated increased public attention on adoption. The reforms resulted in not only cost savings, but in quicker adoptions. Contractors exceeded state standards, which were higher than those which had been applied to state agencies.

Private operators provided outstanding performance on almost every measure, including adoption placement rate, child safety, and siblings kept together. Michigan moved even earlier, if less dramatically, than Kansas.

In Michigan, the Department of Social Services (DSS) has increasingly relied on private agencies to monitor children placed in foster care. Starting in 1992, Michigan began contracting with 55 different private agencies, which handled about 60 percent of all foster care placements and adoptions. According to researchers for Michigan’s Mackinac Center for Public Policy, privatization has delivered better services for less money.

In October 1997, Ohio began a five-year project to set capitated payments for counties, which can use their money more flexibly. North Dakota, with a sparser population and lower caseload, contracted out adoption services. The state also created a public/private organization, Adults Adopting Special Kids, to promote adoption. According to Patrick Poole of the Alabama Family Alliance, "the North Dakota adoption program has one of the highest adoption finalization rates in the country."

Putting Compassion for Children First

There are few circumstances more poignant than hundreds of thousands of children desperate to be adopted and hundreds of thousands of would-be parents desperate to adopt them. Yet today’s government-run foster care system, despite the involvement of many well-meaning social workers, seems incapable of compassionately and efficiently placing many needy children in loving homes.

Despite the down payment on welfare reform made by Congress in 1996, and the varying progress achieved by many states, much more remains to be done, especially in terms of child welfare and the foster-care system. Federal and state policymakers should consider systematic and far-reaching reforms that emphasize the family, private initiative, and personal responsibility. Although saving money is a worthy goal, the more important reason for reform is the children. They deserve better.

* Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.

For additional information, contact Naomi Lopez at (415) 989-0833.