NEW YORK, NY November 10, 2009 —Foster care is supposed to be a short term solution for kids waiting to either go back home or get adopted by a new family. But a new report by a child advocacy group depicts an overburdened system that's causing thousands of children to get stuck in foster care for years. WNYC's Cindy Rodriguez reports:

REPORTER: Tasha Santos is 21 years old and currently lives with her adoptive family in Brooklyn. It took eight years in foster care to get to that point though. Santos says she was removed from her biological mother at eight years of age and placed in four different foster homes by the time she was 12. She says not knowing where you might land next does something to your psyche:

SANTOS: Should I get close to these people because I'm not going to be here for too long anyway. Or - do they really like me. Does it really matter that I'm here to them or is it for the paycheck or like when am I going to move again.

REPORTER: According to the report by Children's Rights, a national advocacy group, out of the 16,000 kids in foster care, there are 4,000 like Santos who've been in foster care for two years or more, and another 2600 who are older teens that will likely age out of the system and be out on their own without a family to rely on for support. Research has shown that those kids often end up homeless or in jail.

Julie Farber is policy director at Children's Rights and says too many New York City kids are growing up with the government as their parent.

FARBER: On day one of a child entering foster care you are supposed to begin working to return that child home. To provide services to that family so that the child can return safely home when that can't happen steps need to be taken to either get that child adopted or place that child permanently with a relative. Foster care is not supposed to be an indefinite status.

REPORTER: The City's Administration for Children's Services, and several foster care agencies allowed Farber's group to analyze the cases of 153 kids who had been in foster care from two to 17 years.

The report paints a picture of caseworkers who are improperly trained, have too many cases, and not enough supervision. There's also high turnover - 51 percent of the kids had been through three or more caseworkers within two years.

In addition, 40 percent of kids were not visited regularly by their caseworkers and 80 percent were not getting regular visits from their biological mothers. Visits with fathers were even more rare. And the report says fathers were rarely even brought into the process.

ACS Commissioner John Mattingly says starting in January the city will require that caseworkers, biological parents, kids and foster parents meet within 48 hours of a child's removal so that visits and service can be put in place:

MATTINGLY: Children and parents who are kept in close contact have a higher rate of successful reunification in a shorter period of time. In addition when a parent has just had her children removed she is in crisis and much more focused on what she needs to do in order to get her children back.

REPORTER: While experts in the field are hesitant to give a precise length of time that a child should stay in foster care, there are regulations. Federal law requires that a biological parent's rights be terminated if a child has been in foster care for 15 out of 22 months.

According to the report, foster care agencies did not file these termination petitions for 69 percent of the children. For about a quarter of the cases there was a compelling reason why. And in 44 percent of the cases it took judges more than a year.

Judges - like caseworkers - are also carrying too many cases. The report documents untenable caseloads of anywhere between 724 to 1,000 kids per judge. The problem has been documented for decades. Judge Edwina Richardson-Mendelson oversees all family courts in New York City and says they need more judges:

RICHARDSON-MENDELSON: There is currently a proposal that has passed the senate that would give new york city family court seven additional judges and believe me - we will take them and we could use them but as I mentioned its not just judicial resources we have attorneys that would have to appear not only in the courts but in these seven new parts as well.

REPORTER: And of course more caseworkers would also be needed. But it's questionable whether those judges will be put in place. The assembly still has to pass the bill and it's not on the list for today's extraordinary legislative session.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's office says that was the governor's call. The state's more than $3 billion budget deficit makes an increase in judge even more unlikely, although Julie Farber from Children's Rights argues that the cost of letting children languish in foster care for years is highly expensive not to mention what it does to thousands of kids. for wnyc, I'm Cindy Rodriguez.