Speaker
Jen Lilley
Appearances over time
1 episodes
Episodes
1
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
According to a May 2026 HHS survey, there are currently 344,000 children in U.S. foster care.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates 63 children disappear from foster care every single day — and that's only the reported cases.
Of children who age out of foster care without adoption or guardianship, only 3% go on to earn a college degree by age 26.
At least 46% of children who age out of foster care end up homeless by the time they are 26 years old.
Children from foster care represent less than 1% of U.S. kids yet make up 17 to 20% of the current prison and jail population.
The U.S. has lost 36,000 licensed foster homes since 2018, creating a severe shortage that is pushing children into hotels, offices, and detention centers.
If one family from every four churches in America became a foster family, it would not only house every child waiting for a home but create a surplus of ready placements.
Research shows children in foster care are twice as likely to suffer from PTSD as combat veterans, reflecting the severity of trauma they endure.
Girls who age out of foster care are 14 times more likely to be arrested than their non-foster-care peers.
36% of infants reunified with biological parents re-enter foster care, typically within 12 months, highlighting the danger of premature reunification.
A 2025 study found that of the $9.6 billion Title IV-E foster care fund, only 2 cents of every dollar actually went toward prevention after the 2018 Family First Act.
The national average social worker turnover rate in child welfare is 36% within 18 months; in Florida it reaches 57%.
Between 2018 and 2024, approximately 170,000 children were effectively removed from official foster care statistics via hidden foster care and unlicensed kinship placements.
There is no federal law and no state law in any of the 50 U.S. states making it a crime to adopt a child from foster care specifically to sexually exploit them.
In 33 U.S. states, a parent or legal guardian can sign consent for a child under 18 to marry, enabling traffickers who've adopted children to legally sell them via dowry arrangements.
In 13 U.S. states, children with no criminal record are being placed in juvenile detention centers because there are simply no foster homes available. They arrive in jumpsuits, get assigned records, and are treated as prisoners — not as kids who needed help.
Between 2018 and 2024, roughly 170,000 children were quietly removed from official foster care statistics through unlicensed kinship placements and hidden foster care. The press release writes itself: we're fixing it. The reality: these kids have no social worker, no Medicaid, no case. No one is watching them.
The 2018 Family First Prevention Services Act was supposed to prevent kids from ever entering foster care. Instead it created mountains of new bureaucracy, defunded therapeutic group homes for the most severely abused children, and produced zero measurable data on whether prevention was even working. Eight years in, only 2 cents of every Title IV-E dollar went to prevention.
There are 350,000 active Protestant churches in the U.S. and 344,000 children in foster care. If one family from every four churches fostered a child, every child waiting for a home would be placed — with capacity to spare for new cases. The math is easy. The will is what's missing.
When CPS removes a child, they're handed a trash bag and given five minutes to grab their belongings. No explanation, no comfort, no dignity. For Jen Lilley, that trash bag is the perfect metaphor for how the system communicates a child's worth — you are trash. The organization Comfort Cases was founded specifically to change this.
The federal 'A Home for Every Child' campaign aims to ease foster parent licensing requirements to address a shortage of 36,000 lost homes. Jen Lilley argues this is catastrophically backwards: lowering the barrier doesn't recruit good-hearted families — it removes the filters that keep abusers out of the system.
A child in foster care was likely born to a parent who was also in foster care, whose parent was in foster care before them. It's not fate — it's a cycle that good foster parents can permanently break. Every child Jen Lilley adopted means no future generation of her family's children will enter the system.
More than half of surveyed Americans wrongly believe that children in foster care are in the system because they are bad kids. The truth: they were removed because of someone else's choices. They never asked to be there. This myth is why 36,000 foster homes have been lost and why the shortage keeps getting worse.
Foster care is ground zero for human trafficking in America. Jen Lilley names it plainly: the system that's supposed to protect children has become the primary feeder for traffickers who prey on kids nobody is looking for.
Jen Lilley and Dr. John DiGarmo went to Congress in 2020 to push premature reunification reform. Every member they met loved the idea. Then a senior HHS official pulled them into a room, told them to leave their phones outside, and explained the reality: their bill would become 300 pages long, get Christmas-treed with things they'd never intended, and ruin the very kids they were trying to help. She walked away and never looked back.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates 63 children vanish from foster care every day — and those are only the ones that get reported. HHS believes the real number is tens of thousands more. These kids are tailor-made targets: vulnerable, unseen, and desperately craving safety.
A woman at the National Foster Parents Association openly told Jen Lilley she made $28,000 a month fostering — by deliberately failing children in school and keeping them on unnecessary medications to drive up their government reimbursement tier. The incentive structure meant to help kids is being weaponized against them.
Adopting a child out of foster care specifically to sexually exploit them is not a crime in any of the 50 states. Congress is aware of this loophole and has done nothing. Traffickers already know it.
In 33 U.S. states, a legal guardian can sign a child under 18 into marriage without the child's consent. In 19 of those states, a marriage license shields the perpetrator from statutory rape charges. Traffickers use it as a purchase receipt.
Children in foster care are twice as likely to suffer from PTSD as combat veterans. They never signed up for a war, never had a choice about being on the front lines — and yet they carry more trauma than most soldiers ever will.
Analysis
What they talk about
- Society & Culture 42%
- Government 33%
- Business 9%
- Health & Fitness 8%
- Religion & Spirituality 8%
