"Over the past two decades, we’ve learned a lot about how best to help families and children when they come into contact with the child welfare system — and we’ve learned what doesn’t work.
"The bottom line from years of research and practice: Nothing is more important than ensuring that every child grows up in a loving family. And that means that children should never grow up in group care....
"Many state and local governments have demonstrated how to maintain family connections for children, by finding relatives to take care of grandchildren, nieces and nephews who are removed from their homes; reducing reliance on group care; and helping struggling families to keep their children safely at home.
"But these best practices are not yet common practice. And that is partly because our 30-year-old federal financing system does not prioritize them, even though it pays nearly half of what we spend on child welfare...."
With the money saved by limiting time in foster care and eliminating reimbursement for poor practices, we can invest more in the people who really make a difference in best practice: the foster families who can keep kids safe and meet their needs; the caseworkers we rely on to make critical decisions; and the young people making their way to adulthood...."
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