Yes. In our brief, we have quite a lot of data of what happens to them. There are no national studies done, but there are provincial studies. One in B.C. showed that 41% of the children, within five years of leaving care, were in the criminal justice system, compared to 6% in the general population.
We know that about 70% of these kids have disabilities of some sort, so when they go out, they become jobless, homeless. They end up on the street. The young women often have children, and then they lose their children to welfare. They really are at a huge disadvantage compared to kids who can come home. They even have no place to go for Christmas. That kind of thing is really bad.
Then they fall into poverty, so they are a burden on the criminal justice system, on the social welfare system. Mostly the burden is themselves. They really are in a terrible situation. They have no support of any kind, so they end up being in poverty, and they repeat the process. They end up becoming another welfare statistic; their children come into care, and it goes on and on, whereas for the children who are adopted here, the cycle is broken. My kids are in their 40s now; they're both doing fine. One is doing extremely well, and she came from a family of two alcoholics. As for her chances of getting out of the system at age 16, she would probably have ended up in the same situation as her parents. She is a wonderful mother of two little kids, and she's doing really well.
Adoption really is a huge benefit to these kids. There shouldn't be 30,000 out there who are waiting for adoption. A lot of families are waiting for these kids. They just don't know about them, and the system hasn't made it easy for them to do it.