On any given day, nearly half a million children are served by foster care services in the U.S. at an annual cost of over $25 billion. Growing demand and shrinking funds have so greatly stressed the child welfare system that calls for orphanages have re-entered the public debate for the first time in nearly half a century. New ideas are desperately needed to transform a system in crisis, guarantee better outcomes for children in foster care, and reduce the need for out-of-home care in the first place. Yet little is known about what works in foster care. Very few studies have examined how alumni have fared as adults or tracked long-term health effects, and even fewer have directly compared different foster care services. In one of the most comprehensive studies of adults formerly in foster care ever conducted, the Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study found that quality foster care services for children pay big dividends when they grow into adults. Key investments in highly trained staff, low caseloads, and robust supplementary services can dramatically reduce the rates of mental disorders and substance abuse later in life and increase the likelihood of completing education beyond high school and remaining employed. The results of this unparalleled study document not only the more favorable outcomes for youth who receive better services but the overall return when an investment is made in high quality foster care: every dollar invested in a child generates $1.50 in benefits to society. These findings form the core of this book's blueprint for reform. By keeping more children with their families and investing additional funds in enhanced foster care services, child welfare agencies have the opportunity to greatly improve the health, well being, and economic prospects for foster care alumni. What Works in Foster Care? presents a model foster care program that promises to revolutionize the way policymakers, administrators, case workers, and researchers think about protecting our most vulnerable youth.

The foster care system attempts to prepare children and youth who have suffered child maltreatment for successful adult lives. This study documents the economic advantages of a privately funded foster care program that provided longer term, more intensive, and more expensive services compared to public programs. The study found significant differences in major adult educational, health, and social outcomes between children placed in the private program and those placed in public programs operated by Oregon and Washington. For the outcomes for which we could find financial data, the estimated present value of the enhanced foster care services exceeded their extra costs. Generalizing to the roughly 100,000 adolescents age 12-17 entering foster care each year, if all of them were to receive the private model of services, the savings for a single cohort of these children could be about $6.3 billion in 2007 dollars.

In the maddening scrum of fake media and even faker talking heads, only one oulet has been brave enough to tell the truth about the Trump administration: The Hatcher Conspiracy. Cleverly designed as a mild-mannered comic strip, and seemingly full of nonsense, The Hatcher Conspiracy is in actuality a carefully researched and nuanced view into the harsh reality of our times. If you are to survive this era, one absolute necessity is a copy of the Hatcher Conspiracy on your bookshelf. The first awful year contains the initial 248 Hatcher Conspiracy comic strips, a couple pages of blather, and a handful of related drawings. A fine starter kit to help you mind your sanity in 2018 and beyond!

Spikey and Einstien "Geography Bee"For Spikey, third grade never lacks for minefields. He's looking forward to a nice, relaxed Geography Bee, and helping his uber-scientific dog, Einstien, with Einstien's latest project. But Lilith, the new girl in class, has other ideas. And once Spikey's and Lilith's parents enter the fray, the completely predictable utter chaos follows.Somehow, Spikey has to win the Geography Bee, and without Einstien's help, that will be impossible. And Lilith intends to remove Einstien from the equation.