Many organizations housing detained migrant children also work with children in state foster care systems.
On any given day there are approximately 19,000 children in New England receiving services in the foster care systems of public child protection agencies.
A rare study of young adults on the verge of leaving foster care systems reveals a bleak portrait of these 17-year-olds in Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa.
States across the country, often in response to cash incentives offered by the federal government, have been under intense pressure in recent years to move children through their foster care systems and into permanent homes.
It also said the "breadth and pace" of the structural improvements that had been made by the agency, the Administration for Children's Services, compared favorably with those undertaken in troubled foster care systems across the nation.
In raising concerns that foster care systems would be burdened by an influx of vulnerable children, advocates noted that poverty is the greatest single ingredient in the mistreatment or neglect of children.
