04-29-2008, 06:05 AM
So how different is a foster care support payment from child support in a divorce settlement? Given the number of parents who have refused to pay or on receiving their child support used it for themselves, not the child involved, it can not be any worse overall.
As for you being "pretty sure", well I do not find that real encouraging. In addition the report was done by an economics professor, not someone in sociology or psychology. A telling quote from a commentator on the study is, "He says some kids, for their own safety, need to be removed from their families, but in marginal cases of abuse, more should be done to keep them together." But who gets to determine what is a "marginal case"? USA Today may not have described the study well, but there had to be some sort of subjective criteria as opposed to objective criteria involved in determining who was removed from the subject population. And that is going to skew the results.
About all I can see consistent in the results is that children raised in a stable environment are going to do better. But that applies also in staying with family or being fostered.
As for you being "pretty sure", well I do not find that real encouraging. In addition the report was done by an economics professor, not someone in sociology or psychology. A telling quote from a commentator on the study is, "He says some kids, for their own safety, need to be removed from their families, but in marginal cases of abuse, more should be done to keep them together." But who gets to determine what is a "marginal case"? USA Today may not have described the study well, but there had to be some sort of subjective criteria as opposed to objective criteria involved in determining who was removed from the subject population. And that is going to skew the results.
About all I can see consistent in the results is that children raised in a stable environment are going to do better. But that applies also in staying with family or being fostered.