In Scotland it is illegal for commercial, for-profit firms to provide foster care.
"It is much cheaper than moving a child and having to provide foster care," Ms. Palma said.
Although the government must provide foster children with basic needs, all those benefits end with a birthday.
There are roughly 45 nonprofit agencies that contract with the city to provide foster care services, but only 8 of them handle the severely disabled.
A number of speakers will call for legislation to help gay and lesbian couples legalize their unions and adopt and provide foster homes for children.
Mr. Scoppetta stopped short of ending the city's contracts with any of the agencies, which provide foster homes for more 23,000 children in the city's care.
Under Connecticut law, state residents temporarily caring for children who are legally under the state's care must be licensed to provide foster care.
For more than a century, New York City has generally looked after abused or neglected children by paying religious charities to provide foster care.
A17 Foster Care Shortage Outdated services, ineffective recruiting methods, and poor or nonexistent support programs for overextended parents have led to a shortage of families willing to provide foster care.
"Founders did so at Borgen's direction in order to provide Foster with a prearranged amount of brokerage commissions in exchange for Foster referring clients," the S.E.C. asserted in its complaint.
