Mitch Landrieu: “In 1999, several of us, including the late John Chafee and former First Lady, Hillary Clinton, took a long hard look at…”

“In 1999, several of us, including the late John Chafee and former First Lady, Hillary Clinton, took a long hard look at our Nation's foster care system and in particular those whom the system failed. Each year 25,000 young people leave our foster care system without ever finding a permanent family. Too many of these young people have been in this system for the majority of their lives, moved from home to home to home, school to school, with no one to count on or turn to for guidance and no where to call 'home.' Studies show that within two to four years of leaving foster care, only half have completed high school, fewer than half are employed, one-fourth have been homeless for at least one night, 30 percent did not have access to needed health care, 60 percent of the young women have given birth, and less than one-in-five are completely self-supporting. In addition, many States report that the overwhelming majority of youth offenders housed in their State prisons were once a part of our Nation's foster care system. While these statistics are, in and of themselves, disturbing, as author, Ruth Sidel, once said, 'statistics are people with the tears wiped away.' It is easier for us to think of the almost 600,000 children making their way through our foster care system as numbers, but they are not. They are children. And like every child, they are born with a need to belong, to be loved, to feel protected and sheltered.”