In 2011 Casey Family Programs unilaterally established a national goal to safely reduce the number of children in foster care by 50%. Since then they have spent $193.1 million to promote this and their related objectives, including $5.3 million in Minnesota.
But how do we know when foster care can be avoided safely, and is 50% the right number?
To answer that we would need to know which children who otherwise would have gone into foster care were diverted from the system, and whether they remained safe. However no such data exists.
Numerical goals that can’t be empirically tested don’t make for good policy or good science.
Public policy goals should be set through democratic processes, not by private foundations, and should be designed so their effectiveness can be verified by research.
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