A Place to Call Home: Improving Foster Care and Adoption Policy to Give More Children a Stable Family
Family relationships are a fundamental source of social capital in a person’s life. A stable and healthy family life is crucial to healthy child development and is associated with a variety of positive outcomes.1 Unfortunately, some children experience only instability and family discord. Sometimes birth parents, knowing they are ill-equipped to provide the emotional and financial security a child needs, place their children in foster or adoptive families that provide enriching relationships and a stable home environment children would otherwise lack.
Tragically, the need for foster and adoptive families is great. In 2018, more than 400,000 children were in foster care, and 18,000 youth left foster care without a permanent home. While the nation’s foster care caseload declined between 2000 and 2012 and the number of children who aged out of foster care without a permanent family has also decreased substantially since 2009, the foster care caseload began to increase steadily after 2012.2 The number of children and youth in foster care is higher today than it has been in nearly a decade.3
Although sometimes foster children are subsequently able to reunite with their biological parents, some are not able to return to their biological parents and require a permanent, adoptive home. For these children stability is especially important, because children who go through multiple foster care placements are worse off than those who experience fewer placements.4 Foster children who age out of the system without a permanent family experience substantial challenges in life.5
Fortunately, many Americans are willing to provide foster care, adopt foster children, or both. In fact, far more Americans are looking to adopt than there are children in need of adoption.6 Although many children in the foster care system have special needs that make it more difficult for them to find families, many Americans are willing to provide foster care for these children and adoptions of special needs children have increased a great deal over the last few decades.7 There are also many private organizations across the United States, including faith-based organizations, dedicated to helping foster children find good homes.
Still, there are several issues that stand in the way of connecting foster and adoptive children with loving homes. These include a child welfare system that is often unsupportive of foster parents, government actions that are pushing faith-based foster care and adoption providers out of service, child welfare systems that keep foster children languishing in temporary placements when they would benefit from permanent adoptive placements, and policies that fail to support infant adoption when expectant parents do not desire a child or when it is unlikely expectant parents will be able to provide safe care.
Government and civil society should work together to help ensure that children in need find loving homes. This can be accomplished by increasing the pool of adoptive and foster parents, protecting faith-based adoption and foster care, providing qualifying foster children with permanent adoptive placements, and supporting infant adoption as a valid and loving option.
Issue 1: Prospective and Current Foster and Adoptive Parents Lack Agency Support
Many Americans are interested in or open to becoming foster or adoptive parents. Roughly a quarter of Americans say they have considered becoming a foster parent, and among Americans who have never adopted, roughly a quarter say they have considered it.8 However, according to one study, only 8 percent of people who inquire about becoming foster parents eventually become licensed.9 The majority of those who do become licensed foster parents cease their service relatively quickly. According to a study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, roughly one half to two-thirds of foster parents discontinued their service within one year of having their first foster child placed in their home.10 In another study, researchers found that 25 percent of new foster homes stop providing service in less than four months.11
While foster parents quit for many reasons, foster parents and prospective foster parents often report a lack of support from child welfare agencies.12 In a 2007 Harris Interactive study researchers found that over half of respondents who had considered foster parenting or adopting reported that the social services agency was either not responsive at all or only slightly responsive.13 The researchers also found that 75 percent of adults who had ever fostered or adopted reported dissatisfaction with the support they received from the child welfare agency either prior to or after placement.14 Similarly, in a study of current and former foster parents, researchers found that the main reason foster parents dropped out of the system was a lack of responsiveness from caseworkers and a lack of agency support.15
Another issue is that although foster parents play a crucial role in the child welfare system, states use very little of their federal or state foster care funding for recruiting foster parents. This may reflect an overall lack of focus on foster parents by the child welfare system.16 Furthermore, most states do not have benchmarks to measure agencies’ success at recruiting and retaining foster parents. According to a 2002 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services survey of foster care program managers, only 21 of 41 managers said their states had recruitment goals, and of the 21 managers reporting that their state had recruitment goals, only 13 states had developed indicators to measure the success of their recruitment strategies.17 Furthermore, the federal Child and Family Services Review, conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to examine state foster care agencies, does not measure recruitment and retention outcomes, such as success in licensing foster parents, the rate of foster parent attrition, or the percent of licensed foster parents who have children placed in their care.
Given the many poor reviews of the foster care system from former foster parents and prospective foster parents, it appears that states and agencies can do a better job of supporting the people who are providing or will potentially provide the day-to-day care for children under the agency’s watch. Improving the system’s treatment of foster parents would likely increase the number of prospective parents who become licensed as well as the number of licensed foster parents who continue to provide service, thus increasing the number of foster homes available to children.
Recommendation: Improve the Foster Care System to Better Support Foster and Adoptive Parents
States and agencies can implement several reforms to improve their relationships with foster parents to increase the likelihood foster parents will be successful.
Measure State Recruitment and Training Efforts
Agencies should focus more on recruiting and retaining foster parents, setting benchmarks and regularly measuring their progress in these areas. A June 2020 executive order issued by President Trump requires that the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “develop a more rigorous and systematic approach to collecting State administrative data as part of the Child and Family Services Review.”18 The executive order mentions specifically collecting data on the average retention rate of foster parents, the number of families available to foster, and the length of time it takes to complete foster care certification. The federal Child and Family Services Review should also measure the number of foster parents who become licensed and the percent of foster homes that have children placed in them.
Furthermore, while states spend very little of their federal or state foster care funding on recruiting or retaining foster parents, states spend a significant portion of their foster care funding on administrative costs. However, there is no correlation between administrative spending and outcomes for children or the quality of services agencies provide.19 States that spend an excessive amount of funding on administrative costs without an improvement in recruiting and retaining foster parents or in increasing the proportion of children placed should receive less federal funding.
Improve Agency Engagement with Parents
Agencies can work to improve their relationships with prospective and current foster parents. Several agencies throughout the nation have received grants to pilot various plans for improving foster parent recruitment. Agencies can learn from other states and implement strategies to improve their support of foster parents and to remove unnecessary barriers to becoming a foster parent.
Use targeted recruitment strategies. Researchers have found that 35 percent of licensed foster parent homes do not have a child placed in them, possibly due to foster families not being willing or able to provide care to the particular children available, such as those with special needs.20 Agencies may be able to improve the likelihood that foster parents have children placed in their care by using targeted recruitment strategies. They can focus their recruitment efforts on individuals who would be most likely to succeed in fostering the children in need of homes in their specific agencies. For example, some agencies have focused recruitment efforts on individuals with similar characteristics to those who have been successful foster parents in the past.21
Another way to improve the match between foster parents and foster children is by providing information to prospective foster parents early on about the children in need of homes. The Denver Department of Human Services developed a website, for example, to provide information to prospective foster parents about the children in need of care, as well as to provide realistic information about foster parenting. The agency found that the website was their most effective recruiting tool and that families recruited through the website were more likely to follow through with the licensing process because the information provided on the website was realistic and helpful.22
Furthermore, to improve and increase recruitment, some agencies have hired program coordinators to lead community-based recruitment teams, while others have assigned staff specifically to seek out family members and fictive kin who would be able and willing to foster.Improve service and treat parents as partners. Given the number of prospective and active foster parents who report poor communication with the child welfare agencies, improving customer service is likely an important area for agencies to focus on to improve recruitment and retention. Improving customer service could include hiring or assigning agency staff to work specifically with foster families as they navigate the application process, ensuring that families have the necessary support as they fill out forms and obtain required documents, and providing help to potential foster families to identify community resources available to them. Agencies can set goals to return phone calls to foster parents and prospective foster parents in a timely manner (e.g., within 24 hours), as well as implement customer service training for agency staff. Some agencies have put actions like these into place and seen improvements in the number of families who complete the application process and receive licensure.23
Agencies should also conduct exit interviews with families leaving the foster care system to get a better sense of what is impeding foster parents’ success, as one agency in Texas did as part of their pilot strategy to improve recruitment.24 Given the high rate of attrition in the foster care system, agencies should make sure they know why parents leave so they can address issues accordingly. This much-needed feedback loop does not exist for some agencies. Agencies can also conduct listening sessions to gather information on what type of support foster families need.25
Other potential ways to improve the relationship foster parents have with the agency as well as their satisfaction with foster parenting include giving foster parents a greater voice in children’s case planning, keeping foster parents informed of children’s court dates and allowing foster parents a voice in such proceedings, giving foster parents greater freedom in approving activities for children, and simply maintaining frequent contact with foster parents.26 Furthermore, an agency can recruit and train a pool of respite care providers so that foster parents have others readily available to them to help provide support.27
Involve private organizations. Private organizations can act as another useful resource in recruiting and supporting foster families. Agencies can partner with churches and other faith-based organizations, businesses, and universities, among others, to help find families who would be able and willing to provide care, to provide training, and to support foster families.
Churches and faith-based organizations generally believe in helping the needy and have provided care to orphaned children for generations. For example, a core Christian duty is to help the orphaned.28 Faith leaders have access to and relationships with families from their congregations, which may make families more likely to be receptive to the invitation to foster or adopt. Families involved in a religious community have a built-in support network to help with the burdens foster parents shoulder, and congregations also usually have available volunteers who may be able to assist in recruiting, training, and supporting foster families.29
There are a variety of faith-based groups supporting foster efforts already. For instance, a faith-based group in Arkansas, The CALL, has helped recruit nearly half of the foster families in the state.30 According to one study, over one third of the families recruited by The CALL said they would not have become foster parents without the organization.31
One Church One Child is another faith-based effort. It was founded in Chicago in 1980 by an African-American Catholic priest who was concerned about the number of African-American children in the foster care system. One Church One Child partners with churches to find adoptive homes for children, with the goal of finding at least one family per church to take in a child. The organization now has multiple locations throughout the country and has placed at least 140,000 children in adoptive homes.32
The support faith-based groups provide may result in more successful foster parenting. One study found that foster parents recruited through church or religious organizations foster 2.6 years longer than other foster parents.33 Another study found that foster parents often indicate that religion or church support are resources that help them successfully foster parent.34 Thus, partnerships with faith-based groups can prove valuable to helping foster parents have a successful experience and ultimately to help children have more stable placements.
Agencies can also work with businesses and universities to recruit foster parents, to encourage family leave policies for adoptive and foster parents, to collect and analyze data, and so forth. Furthermore, there are private organizations that specifically focus on matching foster children with families. For example, Family Share is an organization that maintains a database of parents licensed to provide foster care and adoption. They then use data analytics to match children with parents.35 This approach can help improve the matches between foster parents and children, so that children are more likely to find a stable family situation as well as to find a family more quickly.
Issue 2: Burdensome Requirements May Deter Qualified Foster Parents
Besides a lack of support from the foster care system, foster parents and prospective foster parents sometimes face burdensome requirements for becoming foster parents. This can include lengthy trainings, educational requirements, and bringing a home into compliance with state standards for foster homes. While it is important to ensure that children are placed in safe homes with competent foster and adoptive parents, some requirements seem unnecessary to providing safe care to children and may simply lead to fewer otherwise-qualified people being able to provide service.
Burdensome Foster Parent Trainings
Most states require prospective foster parents to complete a specific number of hours of training before a child is placed in their home, as well as to complete a certain number of hours of training while in service. The number of hours vary, ranging from 6 to 36 hours for pre-service training, for example, although not all states have a specified number of hours of training required.36
While foster parents report that trainings can be useful, the extent of what is required may make it prohibitive for some people to serve as foster parents. In the 2002 report of foster care providers by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 13 of the 41 foster care managers who responded said that training requirements can be a barrier to recruiting foster parents. In the 13 states reporting, the length of training for prospective foster care parents lasted between 9 and 12 weeks, and in 12 states the training period was greater than 12 weeks. The foster care managers also noted that foster parents in rural areas have limited accessibility to training sessions.37
Unreasonable Educational Requirements
Education requirements may also be a barrier to foster parenting. There are a handful of states that require foster parents to hold a high school diploma or GED.38 Virginia goes so far as to require foster parents either to hold a high school diploma or GED while having a year of experience providing care to children in the age range of children being placed in the home, or to hold a bachelor’s degree in a field related to family services, child development, social work, or education.39
While it is necessary that foster parents demonstrate the maturity and skills needed to parent, as well as the ability to communicate with child welfare agency and medical providers, holding a particular educational degree is not needed to be a good parent. Furthermore, the majority of parents in the United States do not possess a college degree, let alone a college degree in a field related to social work or family science. It seems unnecessarily prohibitive to hold a foster parent to a standard that the vast majority of American parents do not meet.Unnecessary Home Requirements
Some foster parents and caseworkers report that requirements regarding the physical characteristics of the home can make it burdensome for people to provide foster care.40 All states have such requirements. While some of these requirements make sense for protecting the child’s wellbeing, others seem overly burdensome and exceed standards that would be required for most parents to provide a safe home for their children.
For example, Wyoming does not allow children of any age to share a bedroom if they are of the opposite sex. Some states not only require a foster home to have a fire extinguisher but they require fire extinguishers to be placed on every floor of the home. Other examples of strict home requirements include: locks for all medications in the household as well as for household chemicals; First Aid kits for the house and the car that contain a specific list of items; emergency contact information available in the vehicle in which children are transported; gates or doors to all stairways in the home unless a child is over the age of five; no cords on window coverings; foster children not being allowed to sleep on a bunk bed or trundle bed; and quarterly fire drills conducted by foster parents that must be reported to the agency.41 Some states require that if the home a child will occupy is rented, the family have renters insurance.42
While states should be concerned with keeping foster children physically safe, some home requirements can and should likely be removed. It makes little sense why infants or toddlers of the opposite sex should not be allowed to share a bedroom. Furthermore, given that most renters in the United States do not hold renters insurance and many are good parents it is unclear why foster parents need to possess this type of insurance.43 While preparing children to know what to do in case of fire is important, it seems highly unlikely that even a small minority of families in the United States conduct quarterly fire drills with their children.
In 2019 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released model foster home standards.44 States are not required to follow the standards, but they are required to submit an explanation if they do not.45 The model standards may make foster parenting more feasible for families in urban areas, such as by not requiring foster parents to own a car or for their homes to meet certain square footage requirements. The standards also keep educational requirements to a minimum.46 Some states have eased their requirements in response, such as by increasing the maximum number of foster children who can reside in a foster home simultaneously. On the other hand, the federal model standards are overly proscriptive in some areas. For example, they include specifics on swimming pool safety and physical exams for foster parents and require foster parents to have recycling service if it is available.47
Recommendation: Eliminate Unnecessarily Burdensome Requirements for Foster Parenting
States and agencies should review requirements for foster parents and eliminate requirements that have little to do with being a committed parent that provides safe care. Burdensome requirements may have the benefit of incrementally safer and better experiences for foster children who find homes, but they have the cost of reducing the number who are placed.
Improve the Foster Parent Training Process
Agencies can work to make sure training sessions for prospective and current foster parents are useful and that the length of time required for trainings is not overly protracted. Making trainings more accessible—such as through providing trainings online, streamlining trainings into fewer sessions, and implementing listening sessions and gathering feedback from foster parents to determine whether trainings are useful—can improve the training experience for prospective and current foster parents.48
States could also offer dual licensing for people who are interested in both foster parenting and adoption so that interested individuals have the option of qualifying for both simultaneously. A dual licensing strategy can cut down on redundancy for many families, considering that 50 percent of children adopted from foster care are adopted by their foster family.49
Remove Unnecessary Education and Home Qualifications
Keeping foster children safe while in care is important, but some of the requirements for parents as well as some of the home safety standards go beyond the mark. For example, while it is important for agencies to ensure that foster parents are able to provide competent care for children, some requirements, such those requiring a particular education degree, seem excessive. If a person can successfully complete the application process, trainings, home study, background checks, and so forth, it makes little sense that a foster parent should be required to hold a particular education degree. States should remove requirements for foster or adoptive parents to hold a diploma or degree. Furthermore, they should examine other personal requirements for foster parents and eliminate those that are excessive.
Furthermore, while agencies have a clear interest in ensuring that a foster child is placed in a physical dwelling that is safe, some state requirements seem simply to be unnecessary barriers. States should reexamine their standards and determine which requirements are excessive or unnecessary and remove or reform those requirements that may simply be standing in the way of good potential foster parents. States should have the flexibility to set their own standards and any federal or national model standards should keep requirements to a minimum.
Issue 3: Faith-Based Providers Have Been Excluded from Providing Foster Care and Adoption Services
For much of the nation’s history, faith-based foster care and adoption agencies have played an active role in helping children in need find homes.
Faith-based providers—many of them quite large— continue to fill this role today.50 For example, Bethany Christian Services has more than 100 offices in 33 states and the District of Columbia, as well as several locations internationally.51 Bethany Christian Services placed nearly 6,500 children in foster or adoptive homes in the United States in 2018 and provided pregnancy counseling services to nearly 3,000 clients.52 Catholic Charities provides similar services nationwide. Between 2006 and 2016 it provided adoption services to 82,000 children.53 In 2016, 45 percent of adoption placements made by Catholic Charities were for children with special needs.54 Beyond providing placement services, faith-based groups are also involved in foster care and adoption through activities such as providing trainings for prospective foster and adoptive parents, providing financial support to foster and adopted children, and recruiting foster and adoptive parents.55
However, in some states and cities, faith-based foster care and adoption providers have been compelled to stop providing these services. This is due to sexual orientation and gender identity laws that would require them to place children with same-sex couples, which would conflict with these providers’ religious beliefs about marriage.
Catholic Charities in Boston stopped providing foster care and adoption placements in 2006, due to sexual orientation laws and the state’s legalization of same-sex marriage that would require them to place children with same-sex couples.56 Catholic Charities in Washington, D.C. ceased their foster care and adoption services in 2010 for the same reason.57
A few years later, in 2011, Illinois started requiring foster care and adoption providers to place children with unmarried couples, including same-sex couples. As a result, Catholic Charities ended its contract with the state and foster children were sent to other agencies.58
More recently, in 2018, the city of Philadelphia told Catholic Social Services that the agency must either be willing to place children with same-sex couples or stop providing foster care services. Because Catholic Social Services would not agree to the city’s request that the agency place children with same-sex couples, Philadelphia ultimately ended its partnership with the organization.59 This occurred the same year that Philadelphia experienced an increase in their foster care caseload and had issued an urgent call for 300 more foster families.60 Catholic Social Services filed a lawsuit against the city but lost at both the federal district and appeals courts. Earlier this year, however, the Supreme Court announced it would hear the case in fall of 2020.61
Faith-based foster care providers in Michigan are also embroiled in lawsuits involving similar matters.62 Although Michigan passed a law in 2015 to accommodate faith-based foster care and adoption providers’ beliefs about marriage, the state is no longer enforcing the law.63 The fate of Michigan’s religious liberty protection for faith-based foster care and adoption providers hangs in the balance as the Supreme Court considers the Philadelphia case.
It is difficult to know for sure what the effect of losing faith-based adoption and foster care providers has been on outcomes such as the number of foster care placements and the number of available foster homes, but it is likely to be substantial. In Illinois, as a result of the state ending its work with faith-based foster care and adoption providers, between 2,000 and 3,000 children were displaced from faith-based adoption agencies and moved into other agencies.64 As noted earlier, a faith-based group in Arkansas, The CALL, is responsible for recruiting nearly half of the foster families in the state, and a third of foster families recruited by the organization said they would not have become foster parents without the organization.65
Besides challenges at the state level, federal challenges to faith-based adoption and foster care providers also exist. The Obama Administration implemented a rule that made federal foster care funding contingent on an agency being willing to place children with same-sex couples.66 However, in the fall of 2019, the Trump Administration issued a new rule to reverse the Obama Administration’s regulation.67
In 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Equality Act, which would prohibit federal funds from going to agencies that do not comply with sexual orientation and gender identity laws (and are thus unwilling to place children with same-sex couples).68 Furthermore, the House Ways & Means Committee held a hearing in late February of 2020 investigating a faith-based organization that had received an exemption from the Obama era rule, as well as examining the Trump Administration’s ruling to undo the Obama regulation.69
Recommendation: Protect the Religious Liberty of Faith-Based Foster Care and Adoption Providers
There are a variety of bills that have already been introduced in Congress to protect religious liberty that would support faith-based organizations’ ability to serve foster and adoptive children. Furthermore, in the June 2020 Executive Order on foster care, President Trump required that the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provide guidance to federal, state, and local agencies making it clear that faith-based agencies are eligible to partner with government agencies on an equal basis, according to the First Amendment.70
Members of Congress have introduced legislation to protect religious liberty regarding individuals’ and organizations’ beliefs about marriage. For example, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced the First Amendment Defense Act in 2018, which would prohibit the federal government from discriminating against individuals or organizations based on their religious or moral beliefs about the definition of marriage.71 Specifically, the act would prohibit the federal government from considering an individual or organization’s beliefs about marriage for purposes of providing grants, granting accreditation or licensure, or determining an organization’s tax status.72
Furthermore, Senator Michael Enzi (R-WY) and Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA) introduced the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act in 2019. This act would prohibit states that receive federal Title IV foster care funding from discriminating against foster care and adoption providers based on their religious or moral beliefs about marriage.73
Finally, states should pass laws to protect organizations’ and individuals’ free exercise of religion in regards to their beliefs about marriage. Several states have passed such laws and others should follow suit.
Issue 4: Children Languish in Foster Care When They Would be Better Served by Permanent Placement
Foster care plays an important role for children who need to be removed from their homes due to abuse or neglect. But foster care is not a permanent placement and children should not be left to languish in temporary care. Children who remain in the foster care system for long periods of time are more likely to drift through multiple foster care placements or to age out of foster care without a permanent family, both of which are associated with lower wellbeing.74
When a child enters foster care, child welfare agencies should take steps expeditiously to determine a permanency plan for the child. Making a timely case plan is especially important for very young children who are in the developmental stage of forming attachment with their caregiver.75 (The largest age group of children entering the foster care system are children under the age of one.)76
Under federal law, children are required to receive a permanency hearing within 12 months of being placed in the foster care system, in which the court determines whether the child’s case plan will be reunification with his or her parents, termination of parental rights and adoption, legal guardianship, or “another planned permanent living arrangement.”77 However, some states report that it can take months to get a trial scheduled due to backup in the system.78
Some states do better than others at moving children to permanency (see Figure 1). For example, the median length of stay for children in foster care is 5 months in South Carolina, according to the most recent data, whereas it is 34 months in Illinois. When it comes to moving children into adoptive homes, in Utah 80 percent of children are adopted in under two years, whereas in Oregon only 12 percent of children are adopted in less than two years. In West Virginia and Wyoming only 1 percent of foster youth age out of the system without a permanent placement, whereas in Virginia 23 percent do.
In states that are less effective at moving children to permanency, three issues may be to blame: weak enforcement of the Adoption and Safe Families Act, poor incentives in the Title IV-E foster care funding, and non-compliance with the Multiethnic Placement Act.
Figure 1. Foster Care Ranking Variables by State, 2018
Median length of stay in foster care, percent of children adopted in less than two years, percent of children who age out of foster care without a permanent placement, and percent of foster care entries that are re-entries
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Child Welfare Outcomes Report Data, 2017, https://cwoutcomes.acf.hhs.gov/cwodatasite/sixOneLessThan12/index.
Weak Enforcement of the Adoption and Safe Families Act “15 of 22” Rule
Federal law requires that if a child has been in the foster care system for 15 of the past 22 months, the agency must file for termination of parental rights so that a child can be adopted. There are exceptions to this rule: for instance, states can exempt children from the 15 of 22 rule if a child is living with kin, the agency has not made sufficiently reasonable efforts to reunify the child with his or her parents, or the court determines that it is not in the best interest of the child for parental rights to be terminated.79
Congress established the 15 of 22 rule in the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. The act was implemented as part of the Title IV-E foster care program, which provides funding to state foster care systems. Policymakers were concerned about the major growth of children in foster care that took place in the 1980s and 1990s and feared that children were remaining in the system too long.80
Prior to the Adoption and Safe Families Act, Congress passed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, which mandated that states make reasonable efforts to rehabilitate biological parents before terminating their parental rights. The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 defined what “reasonable efforts” are and exceptions to the requirement for aggravated circumstances, such as in cases of chronic abuse, abandonment of the child, or sexual abuse.81 Proponents of the 1997 legislation argued that the 1980 law leaned too heavily towards rehabilitating parents, leaving too many children to languish in the system when it was unlikely a parent would be fit to provide care again or be able to do so within a reasonable amount of time. They also argued that children were too