Best idea ever.

I was listening to NPR (last Sunday?), and heard part of a piece about group – or a person – or somebody in some county in some state (are you with me?) who decided that

Geez. I’ve confused myself even. Let me start over.

There have always been problems with the foster care system. Children are in foster care in hopes of placing them back with their parents, instead of being adopted and staying with one family forever. Unfortunately, there are folks who host foster kids for the subsidy.

Placing kids with good families is a problem. Someone (and I don’t know who because I can’t freaking find the story) decided that part of the problem is the presentation of information about the children. The files with each kids history and whatnot comes with a passport style photograph.

This impersonal and mugshot-looking picture would never capture the true essence of a child.

Photographers volunteered to photograph the children, I believe in a gym on a Saturday, using their own backgrounds and lighting and whatnot. The county was able to sign release forms, since the children were under its legal care.

Warm, funny, heartfelt photographs of children really acting like themselves were taken. The children had all sorts of attention paid to them. One girl said that she felt like a movie star.

I don’t remember the numbers, so I’ll make them up. Something like 17 of the 44 children photographed were almost immediately placed with families.

The state of New Jersey has decided to do the same thing – photographing all of the children in its system.

Doesn’t that sound amazing? Can you imagine the difference a sweet personality-capturing photograph would make on people who aren’t sure if they want to be foster parents?

So here’s the deal. This NPR story has captured my imagination. What are the downsides? There isn’t the pain-in-the-ass consent form issue, because the state would provide that. A couple of photographers, a couple rolls of film, and you’d have images of children that would make you want to adopt them, not discard them.

The foster care system seems to affect the lives of children in a very negative way. Any child spared of this experience would be one more person less likely to be unhappy, unsuccessful, or even criminal.

It seems like a really simple solution to a problem that affects people for the rest of their life. Has anybody else listened to the story? I can’t seem to find it anywhere, and I’d like to listen to the whole thing, to find out if this is a nonprofit organization, or if this is a state-by-state effort. I’m down.