ABSTRACT
The United States Department of Health and Human Services (2003) reported that in September 2001 there were 542,000 children in the foster care system in that country while it is estimated that 805,000 children were in foster care for some period in that year. Given such numbers, the foster care system is sorely lacking in
resources in terms of social work staff and available foster care placement, among other things (Hochman, Hochman, & Miller, 2003). Due to changes in federal mandates and views about adoption, there are many older children now available for adoption in the system who urgently need to be placed (Kirby & Hardesty, 1998). In 2003, there were 126, 000 children in the U.S. foster care system waiting to be adopted, 64% of whom had been in the system for more than 2 years (Hochman et al., 2003). Child Welfare is thus under considerable pressure to place these large numbers of children, some of whom are hard to place due to older age or exceptionality. At least 17% of children in foster care in the United States in 2000 (an estimated 91, 828 children) had been in the child wel fare system for 5 or more years (Perez, O’Neil, & Gesiriech, 2003). The longer children stay in the foster care system, the higher the risk that they will have had multiple foster placements and thus also suffer the insecurities that are associated with such an experi ence. For instance, the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (2003) report ed that in 2002 of those children who had been in care less than 12 months, 81% had had two or fewer placements, while that number dropped to only 39% for children who had been in the system for 4 or more years.
