Analyzes the challenges facing the child welfare system and offers recommendations for making it more responsive to both families and children. Major challenges include expanding caseloads with complex needs; a disproportionate representation of children of color, which is aggravated by poverty and racial stereotyping; high staff turnover; and difficulties recruiting foster families and a decline in non-related foster families. The foster care experience can be emotionally traumatic for children, and it is associated with detrimental developmental outcomes and lower educational achievement. The experience can be frustrating for foster parents, who are expected to care for children, many with special needs, lacking adequate financial support and minimal training, and having limited access to respite care. Recommendations for securing safe, stable, and supportive homes for foster children include responding directly and effectively to children’s particular developmental needs, which involves recognizing connections between developmental delays and cultural and environmental influences; addressing differential treatment of children of color and poor children; diffusing cultural competence throughout the system and ensuring staff competency in social work; strengthening birth families and increasing supports for foster families; improving data collection and accountability; and experimenting with innovative models that recognize the community context of foster care.
