Children who experience foster care, write Youngmin Yi and Christopher Wildeman, are considerably more likely than others to have contact with the criminal justice system, both during childhood and as adults. And because children of color disproportionately experience foster care, improvements to the foster care system could reduce racial/ethnic…

It might seem strange to ask whether increasing access to medical care can improve children's health. Yet Lindsey Leininger and Helen Levy begin by pointing out that access to care plays a smaller role than we might think, and that many other factors, such as those discussed elsewhere in this issue, strongly influence children's health.…

This paper focuses on the challenges of helping children after abuse and neglect has occurred by strengthening the web of supports for children and families in foster care. It examines the current state of the foster care system and finds that it is really not a cohesive system but a combination of many overlapping and interacting agencies, all…

Since the 1970s, finding alternative permanent families for children in foster care who could not return to their birth parents has been a primary goal of the child welfare system. Since that time, significant gains have been made in helping such children find permanent homes through adoption and guardianship. This article analyzes these trends…

To provide an array of perspectives on the future direction of foster care, five experts across various disciplines and backgrounds were asked to respond to this question: "How can the child welfare system be improved to better support families and promote the healthy development of children in foster care?" This article presents their responses…