1、 https:/crsreports.congress.gov May 12, 2015Use of Group Care for Children in Foster CareFoster care is a temporary living arrangement meant to ensure a childs safety. Children most commonly enter foster care due to neglect or abuse experienced at the hand of their parent, and some children may also
2、 have significant behavior problems. Foster care is provided on a 24-hour basis in a foster family home of a relative or non-relative or in various non-family settings. Those non-family settings, referred to collectively in this brief as “group care,” range from those that provide specialized treatm
3、ent or other services to more general care settings or shelters. They may be settings serving as few as seven children or institutions serving hundreds. Among children entering foster care in FY2008, 20% experienced group care at some point during the next five years and their average length of stay
4、 in group care was nine months. Some argue that group care should only be used to meet specialized mental or behavioral health needs of foster children (and for a limited treatment time), that it should rarely or never be used for younger children, and that better quality services are needed. At the
