Foster Care: Helping Abused and Neglected Children

This brief finds that by shifting our child welfare service investments into integrated, community-based, and “front end” preventive services, we’ll get better results for kids, and at a lower cost. Other steps needed to support youth in DCF care include ensuring high quality legal representation in child protection hearings, establishing more flexible federal funding rules that encourage state innovation, and better supporting youth as they “age out” of foster care.