Title: Improving Data-driven Approaches to Adoption from Foster Care
Abstract: More than 100'000 children in the U.S. foster care system cannot be reunified with their birth parents and therefore have a goal of adoption by another family. Finding a family that is capable and willing to take in a specific child or sibling set is often difficult and time-consuming. In hope of making the search process more efficient, some adoption agencies have recently modernized their operations and now utilize data-driven software to identify matches between children and prospective parents. After introducing the audience to adoption agencies' current tools and practices, I highlight related inefficiencies. I then present ideas on how techniques and tools from computer science and economics could be used to address these inefficiencies.
