Katy Roberts , Columnist

Make Foster Care Work, Let Churches Lead

January 17, 2014 at 2:00 PM UTC

Katy Roberts is an editor for Bloomberg Opinion. She previously worked at the New York Times, serving as national editor and editor of the op-ed page and Week in Review (now Sunday Review).

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Every two minutes, a child enters foster care in the U.S. About 400,000 children live in these temporary homes, a quarter of them permanently separated from their biological families and available to be adopted.

Many never find permanent families; the lucky ones wait an average of more than three years to be adopted. The New York Times recently described a child who bounced through more than 40 different homes after entering the New York City foster system at age 12. In 2011, 26,000 foster children turned 18 and aged out of the system -- up from 17,000 in 1998.