"often experiencing serious abuse in one or more of those foster homes."
What kind of abuse are you talking about? What state has these cases occuring? Who did any research? I can tell you right now that the foster parents I know have paid out of their own pockets for all the many expenses that the state allowance doesn't cover, that they have walked the floors and sat up nights with their children, whom many of us loved as our own...we've made Christmas, and Easter, and Thanksgiving, Fourth of July and a closet full of clothes, and a room of their own, and a peaceful, plentiful dinner table, night after night, sent them off to school with a prayer and a blessing, hugged and kissed them, and when they went back to their "real" parents, cried and prayed that they would be okay...
You know NOTHING about foster parents. NOTHING.
We were a couple who were meant to be parents of a large family...due to health problems I had in my pregnancies, we couldn't have as many children as we had love for...so we were foster parents...we would have adopted the children, but their parents felt they could take care of them just fine...all of them, when they were sent back home, went back into foster care within a year...that was heartbreaking, devastating, especially when we knew where they were coming from...finally, we couldn't take the heartbreak and loss anymore...
I know lots of foster parents, and former foster parents, just like us. You have to put up with a lot in any state's system just to be one...your bank accounts, your family history, your work history--everything is investigated...a criminal background check is done, home visits take place, announced and unannounced...the funds the state allows for the children's care are woefully short...you have to WANT to help children to be a foster parent.
Your throwaway remark was uninformed. You have no idea what you are talking about.