[sokoloff]

It's not inaccurate to categorize them as "foster kids", but I think it risks putting too much emphasis on the wrong part of the root of the problem, just like thinking of people as "level 1 trauma center patients" rather than "car crash victims", "shooting victims", or "workplace accident victims".

When we see poor outcomes from trauma centers, we don't exclusively focus on better trauma medicine to improve per-patient outcomes; we also take steps aimed at reducing the number of patients created to improve society-wide outcomes.

Underlying every foster kid is some kind of failed original/default family situation. Improving the outcomes of the set of all children may have less to do with improving the foster machine and more to do with changing the dynamics that feed so many children into the gears of that machine in the first place.