Editor's Note: This column was co-authored by Mike Watkins.
The National Council for Adoption's latest report reveals a disappointing reality—our foster care and adoption system is collapsing, failing the children most in need of our help. The U.S. foster care population is declining, not for lack of need, but for lack of capability. Adoptions from foster care have plunged to a two-decade low, with more than 15,000 teenagers aging out of the system with no permanent family ties, thrust into society alone and unprepared. The system is shrinking, but not succeeding in caring for our children.
Clearly, we need a new model to care for America's vulnerable foster children. And our greatest chance at success is to root it in faith, community, and enduring human connection rather than bureaucratic social intervention.
The vast majority of children who enter foster care come from single-parent households facing poverty, housing instability, parental stressors, or lack of support, rather than intentional harm. For children raised in homes without two parents, extended family involvement, or a church community, the likelihood of foster care increases dramatically. And for more than 50 years, our nation has relied on a government-centered approach to protecting these vulnerable children. But the abysmal results speak for themselves.
Since the inception of the federal Child and Family Services Reviews back in 2000, not a single state has ever met all seven of the national standards for child safety (two objectives), permanency (two objectives), or child well-being (three objectives). Not a single state, even a single time. Unfortunately for America's children, this is not an incidental failure. It is evidence of a system committed to insufficient corrective action plans that are structurally incapable of producing outcomes that lead to meaningful child and family well-being.
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The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) of 1974 fundamentally changed America's approach to child well-being. While well-intentioned, CAPTA centralized power in state agencies, mandated expansive reporting systems, and tied federal funding to government-run social intervention models. An unintended but profound consequence: entire communities were pushed out of the work of caring for children, as the responsibility shifted primarily to government.
What had once been a shared moral obligation of well-being carried out by faith communities, kinship networks, extended families, neighborhoods, and local caregiving networks was dismissed in favor of bureaucracy. The effect of this shift on children was powerful. Attendance replaced belonging. Service referrals replaced guidance. Case management checklists replaced care.
President Trump's Fostering Our Future Executive Order points the nation in the right direction, reaffirming that real child well-being begins with strong families and engaged communities, not bureaucracy. Children do not heal or grow through such impersonal systems. They do so through meaningful relationships. They do not build attachments to institutions; they build them with people who have their best interests at heart. In order to rebuild what CAPTA unintentionally dismantled and set foster children on a path to health and success, we must embrace what we call a "Faith in Families" approach:
1. Limit government's role to oversight, safety assurance, and emergency response, not direct caregiving.
2. Re-center the care of children in communities, where human connection is present and enduring. Give parents and communities back their agency.
3. Strengthen families early, especially single parents, through shared parenting, mentoring, and practical support.
4. Shift our focus from case management to meaningful care, where the primary unit of intervention is relationship, not paperwork.
5. Activate communities of worship to reclaim their responsibility to uplift and support vulnerable families.
Scripture is clear on this calling; James 1:27 reminds us, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress..." This is not optional. It is foundational.
The path forward requires courage to admit that 50 years of government expansion has not solved the problem. Courage to trust communities again. Courage to restore to us the sacred work of caring for one another.
Our children deserve better than a system that files paperwork to manage their crises. They deserve communities that prevent those crises or help them grow through the experience. If children are to flourish, we must restore faith in families, trust in community, and the conviction that caring for vulnerable children is not the government's job alone. It is all of ours.
Jack Brewer, former NFL captain and Civil Rights Commissioner, serves as a senior fellow at the America First Policy Institute and Chairman of the Jack Brewer Foundation.
Mike Watkins is CEO of NWF Health Network, which serves vulnerable populations in rural communities.
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