Imagine being a child who, through no fault of his own, is waiting to be adopted, waiting to become part of a family with loving parents.

Imagine that wait taking four years.

That is the situation in South Carolina. More than 750 children are in state custody, waiting to be adopted, with an average wait of 45 months. That is almost two years longer than the national goal.

For some of these children, a four-year wait is indeed a lifetime. And for the others, it must feel like an eternity.

Many will spend that time being shuttled from foster home to foster home. When they finally are adopted, they will go to their new home with scars no child so young should even know about.

Why the long wait? State Department of Social Services officials admit the system doesn't work but say the problem has been worsened by state budget cuts.

After a presentation last week by Social Services director Kim Aydlette, Gov. Mark Sanford said he and his staff would work with the General Assembly and the courts to fix this broken system.

During the past several years, it has been tempting for every state agency to blame problems on budget cuts. That is not to downplay the seriousness of the effect of cuts on the Social Services Department. Most of these children are not the healthy infants most often sought by prospective adoptive parents. They may be children with severe mental or physical handicaps. They may be older children, or a group of siblings the department is trying to keep together as a family. Certainly having financial incentives to help encourage adoption of these children is needed. And it is understandable that the elimination of almost 1,400 Social Services job positions since 2001 would slow the process.

But much of the delay can be attributed to bureaucratic fumbling, with backlogs of court dates and endless paper trails.

Putting the children first has to be the goal, and the governor and Social Services employees must find a way to speed this system.