No Easy Answers for a Troubled System

Abstract This chapter examines how declining federal support for social programs from the mid-1980s through the 1990s undermined child welfare reforms. Funding cuts, mass incarceration, and other ill-conceived policies weakened the effect of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act, the education system neglected poor children and HIV/AIDS, crack, and homelessness continued to cause foster care rolls to swell. In response, reformers adopted three (and a half) strategies: community-based family preservation services, kinship foster care, adoption incentives, and the tentative launch of independent living programs for aging-out youth. The chapter explores these initiatives, with special attention to emerging independent living programs, including CV’s employment and aftercare program (WAY). Nonetheless, foster care numbers kept climbing and a backlash against family preservation mounted. Testifying before Congress, Dale advocated for family-based care for most kids in out-of-home care, residential treatment for those who need it, mandatory RTC accreditation, and funding for aftercare and preventive services. Little changed.