https://www.ccainstitute.org/resources/fact-sheets
56% of foster children who leave foster care are reunited with their families OR a living relative.
But then they say only 26% were adopted, and only 8% age out (all for year 2019).
This needs one of those Sankey charts or something to clarify what they really mean with these stats to see what the percentage of kids “leaving” foster care is in a given year, to know how that stacks up with all outcomes.
I went through some foster parent training with my county, and those were the expectations they set. We also know a few parents who foster. YMMV, I suppose, as the stats can be very different in other counties.
Children can be placed with relatives even if relatives aren’t part of the foster system – a judge can decide this. They prefer for the children to remain with family before placing them in foster care.
If relatives dont count as being in foster care, then yes, I can see that being the most likely outcome. But even if it’s lumped together in the stats, it also doesnt count as being reunited with their parents. 
In your opinion, was the expectation of reunification driven by the attitude of wanting it to happen (as clearly being the best option), or something they’d generally consider a good bet to happen? Arch’s stat above makes it to be only about a 50/50 possibility, and only that’s when including placement with relatives.
My understanding from the training and from the people we know is that it’s a good bet. The few who eventually adopted a child (or two, because siblings) fostered multiple others first for a long time.
On the subject of IVF, NPR had a piece on this recently with some IVF doctors. They don’t have the transcript up, but it should be there fairly soon and you can listen if you want.
They talked about how the anti-abortion laws proposed were broadly of the form
the latter of which would impact the IVF market. They cited about 2% of kids currently born via some sort of reproductive health intervention.
Also, on the subject of human “potential”, I believe (but couldn’t verify) that they said only 25% of natural fertilization events would lead to a successful birth. The improving day 5 IVF, vs older day 3 IVF embryos, have better odds than this even inspite of selectively dealing with people who have genetic problems and needing to seek IVF in the first place. This was because many embryos fail between 3-5 days so those non-viable ones are never implanted these days, unlike before they knew how to grow them a bit longer. Picking the best “embryo quality” also significantly enhances live birth success rates, removing many defective ones via generic screening and visual inspection for abnormalities (cell fragments or variations in cell size).
Obviously laws that regulate fertilized eggs could impact the IVF market, which routinely freezes embryos for multiple rounds of IVF attempts. I can only imagine if destroying those embryos becomes forbidden that the IVF clinics will periodically deliver a basket of frozen cell culture dishes to the local “safe haven” baby drop off center to give them “up for adoption”.
More history on crime trends
if mass incarceration ever existed, it was between 1930 and 1960. As crime worsened, governments were slow to react, getting a handle on the problem only well after the crime wave had begun. By then, however, the reformers who gave us institutions of confinement had turned against them, leaving millions of seriously mentally ill people to their own devices and then waging campaigns to reduce incarceration.
Behavioral disorders and pathological criminal prototypes linked with serious offenders are far more common than is incarceration. Over the past 40 years, the prevalence of prison confinement in the United States has ranged from 0.1 percent to 0.9 percent of the population. This pales next to the estimated prevalence of clinical psychopathy (1 percent), clinical antisocial personality disorder (3–4 percent), career criminality (5–6 percent), and life-course-persistent offending (10 percent). Extrapolating from these estimates, one suspects that many criminal psychopaths, career criminals, and offenders with lifelong conduct problems remain free to continue their offending careers.
Sound right to me. The problem for IVF will be in the laws that don’t distinguish between fertilization (day 0) and viability (say at day 5, or whatever better day science discovers in the future).
I don’t think there’s a big market for fertilized eggs, especially since they’ll be of the lower quality.
He’s referring to safe haven laws, which designate specific areas (like fire houses) where you are able to surrender/abandon an infant/child, no questions asked.
If the unused fertilized eggs cannot be destroyed under the law because they’re considered a baby, the facility can instead pawn them off on the public by legally abandoning them at a safe haven location.
I understand, and what you wrote doesn’t contradict what I wrote. A newborn abandoned at a safe haven location will be placed in the care of the state, foster system, etc. There’s a high demand for adopting newborns and low supply, so the state burden is relatively low. But the demand for fertilized eggs, especially because they’re likely to be of lower quality (because the higher quality ones would have been implanted into the biological mother), is probably very low, and the state may have to keep them frozen indefinitely, which is not cheap.
Maybe Friday is the day
After languishing for years in most cases. It is truly sad.
If you look at the “heart gallery” web site in any state, you can see the same kids year after year.
Reunification likely varies by state. In my state, DCFS is focused on that and vocally not focused on foster to adopt. It is tragic for the kids and the adoptive parents.
Supreme Court ruled against NY’s unconstitutional gun control laws.
The US supreme court has opened the door for almost all law-abiding Americans to carry concealed and loaded handguns in public, after the conservative majority struck down a New York law that placed strict restrictions on firearms outside the home.
which is just as well the way politicians and police seem to be not bothering to protect the public as a priority of late. Meanwhile, from our Dear Leader,
Not sure what “voices” have to do with constitutionality, but maybe he means more people should be pressured into killing off those rogue constitutionalists on the Court so he can get the laws he prefers.
Local laws and lawmakers? Constitutional amendment?
Local laws are subject to the Constitution too. And no one wants a Constitutional amendment, they want to simply ignore the Constitution (or, perhaps more accurately, the want to merely shout away the Constitution).
Dobbs just dropped. No surprises. It’s by Alito. Roberts has concurred!
Roe and Casey are overturned by a 6-3 vote.
Now it’s up to the individual states.
That is the way things should have been from the jump.
But the libs are going NUTS!!
ETA
Confusion has arisen over Roberts’ non-concurrence concurrence.
Is it 6-3 or 5-4?
ETA
OK, I was right the first time. It is 6-3. But Roberts is not entirely happy.
ETA
Interesting:
Liberal sites are reporting the vote as 5-4, while other sources are saying the vote was 6-3.
At this point I dunno.
OK, Snopes is saying it’s 6-3
This appears to clear up the matter of Roberts’ confusing abortion vote:
As always lately has been the case, Roberts sought to “split the baby” with his concurrence; part on board part not on board.
Technically the vote on this matter, at the bottom line and officially, was 6-3.
But Roberts made it clear he does not buy into the majority opinion wholeheartedly. He has reservations. Liberals and pro-deathers are jumping on this situation and claiming it was a narrowest possible 5-4 decision. That’s not true.
And Roberts is left still being invited to attend the Washington, DC high society cocktail parties he and his wife enjoy so much.
He seemingly played politician. I dont fault his reasoning, though, that deciding this case did not inherently require addressing Roe in the first place. That is a very judicial perspective that I can respect.
