ABSTRACT
Although family foster care provides for the safety of children, the children still experience the emotional and psychological distress caused by the separation from their families. The proliferation of specialized family foster care programs to meet the needs of children with developmental, behavioral, emotional, or medical needs will most likely continue in the next century. The findings have implications for child welfare administrators' allocation of limited resources among kinship care, nonrelative foster care, and specialized family foster care programs. Parental drug abuse is the biggest threat to the well-being of children entering care today and in the next century. In 1980, in response to the "drifting" of children in care, Congress passed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, a key factor in shaping the current status of family foster care. The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 "establishes unequivocally that the national goals for children in the child welfare system are safety, permanency, and well-being".
