Making a Success of Foster Care

Britain's model of child protection and foster care (which sounds a lot like ours) is compared to Germany's:

Almost three quarters of [children in foster care] will leave care with no formal qualifications. Only one per cent will go on to enter any kind of university education. One fifth of looked-after children are homeless two years after leaving care; 25 per cent of our prison population has been through the care system. Things have to be really bad at home before care looks like a better option.

Yet in other countries the picture is very different. In Germany looked-after children do extremely well, with 95 per cent of children in the German care system going on to vocational education. Crime committed by looked-after children in Germany runs at 5 per cent of the rate of crime committed by those in our care.

This comes at a price:

Money is important. In Germany most looked-after children live in small community homes, with fewer than 16 residents. By contrast, more than two-thirds of our looked-after children are placed in foster families which cost less than a quarter of a residential placement in Germany.

But as compared to the up-front cost of effective foster care, are diminished productivity among foster care graduates and increased cost of incarceration the proverbial "pound of cure"?