Examines the progress being made in helping children find permanent homes through adoption and guardianship as well as the new challenges facing the foster care system. Current trends indicate that most states have doubled the number of adoptions from foster care over baselines established by the federal government, and that legal guardianship initiatives at the state level have enabled thousands of children to achieve permanence. Although efforts to expedite permanence in the past several decades have succeeded in overcoming stereotypes regarding adoption, surveys indicate that adoptive families as well as guardians still require post-permanency services, including short-term respite care to alleviate parental stress, camp and other summer activities, support groups for adoptive families and children, educational support by way of tutoring, testing, and advocacy, and counseling. Permanency planning, however, has a darker side: the placement of younger children in permanent homes may result in a residual group of older public wards with special developmental, emotional, and learning needs. This residual population will place demands on the regular foster care system that it cannot meet without special wraparound and other support services. Ultimately, these wards will need assistance in making a successful transition to independent adulthood.
