I'm deep in thought this morning, and rambling more than a bit, but would like to put some of the news leading the week on the table and invite everyone to pull up a chair.

Lanette's writing today on the Foster Care Blog strikes a chord as I compose posts, since much of the recent news ties into her thoughts and makes the questions she poses very timely.

I had written last week about a report into abuse by partners of mothers that results in terrible consequences to children. Over the past couple of days, the gruesome details of the life and death of 2-year-old Riley Ann Sawyers provides another counterpoint to the discussion in Lanette's post on children in foster care.

Not that these are new issues or that the conversation is just beginning; not by a long shot, and I suspect it will continue for as long as it's been going. I posted a blog back in August that addressed an outcry in the UK in reaction to what some saw as far too many children being removed from families, while others took the position that there were actually too few being taken into care, saying that even with 2,120 children taken, a child was being killed by parents every week in the country.

Somewhat like the debate that rages over international adoptions that came up recently in the comments section of blog I wrote on the reality of life for children in Africa that insists that grinding poverty should never be a motivator for relinquishment, I can't help but wonder if what we're talking on both fronts is apples and oranges.

We have an example here, for instance, of a woman who turned her life around after losing her child, gave up drugs, cleaned up and now is about to become a "mentor mum" in a new British family drug and alcohol court meant to help parents and keep families together.

Great! Wonderful! Good idea! All the best! Let's every one of us stand and cheer this woman and the UK's move to establish a resource.

But ...

Does anyone really think that this will wipe out child abuse in Britain? Of course not. It will help some people, maybe, for some period of time. There are bound to be grand successes ... a few.

What the odds are, I don't know, but I do know that way back when in the '70s when I worked in a residential treatment facility for heroin addicts, the US national five-year "cure" rate was right around 3%. I doubt that's changed much. Realistically speaking, most people that dive into the drug pool sink to the bottom and stay there.

If they have kids, should they be doomed, too? If the handwriting is on the wall, should someone be reading it?

It seems that a good deal of the conversation that revolves around the "family preservation" fringes casts children as a product manufactured and fully within the ownership of parents, no matter what, and this may be at the root of the apples/oranges miscommunication that sets the tone for so much strife in the adoption community.

Does a child "belong" to the manufacturers? Or is a child a human being deserving of the best chance at life possible? Yes, there are a million ways to define "best", but if that definition is set at "alive" does that move any goal posts?

Are we, as citizens of the planet, mandated to act on behalf of the youngest among us or to protect the sanctity of the family unit? We often can't do both because it is not doable, so it would be helpful to pick a side of the fence and stay there. The fact that the great majority of parents are wonderful, that some children have been relinquished by great people or that a percentage of adoption have been conducted unethically or illegally does not alter the question.

Some may say that throwing poverty, drug use, abuse and such into the pot makes for an undigestible soup, and although it certainly does make the mix less appetizing all are the ingredients of life for millions of children, so leaving them out negates the soup and the pot.

Thoughts?