One of the biggest barriers in helping children who are in foster care find permanent, loving homes has been a lack of data. We offer this report today, including recommendations both for state and federal-level policymakers as a promise to these kids that we haven't forgotten them. The Institute for Children maintains that there's no such thing as an unadoptable child. There are people waiting in line to adopt kids who are HIV positive, people more than willing to adopt teens and children of every age, ethnic background, and with every type of disability. It's our hope as an organization that this will mark the first step for these children in finding homes.
States vary as to where they are in implementation of their data tracking systems.
They know how many there are, and they know their characteristics. In others, it's much more difficult. I can recall one conversation with a department director who told me that the only way that he could get this information was to pull out each file of each child in state care, go through it, and make notes on the information we were requesting. In the end, that's exactly what he did and, as a result, we had the information which was previously unavailable. In other states, it was difficult to get directors to disclose the information at all, which was supposed to be public information.