Foster Care By The Numbers

· Currently, there are over half a million children in foster care
· On average, a child who enters foster care will remain there for 32 months
· Only about half are returned to their parents
· Over six million children are living with grandparents (4.5 million) or other relatives (1.5 million)
· Each week, nearly 50,000 children come to the attention of child welfare service agencies throughout the US
· In 2002, nearly three million children in the US were reported as abused and/or neglected with 896,000 of these substantiated 1
· The federal government estimated that throughout the 2003 federal fiscal year, 800,000 children were served in foster care in family and non-family settings, mostly due to maltreatment. 2
· Although there has been a small decrease since 2001, the number of children who are placed in out-of-home care has risen substantially since 1980; this increase is likely due to growing vigilance over child maltreatment, a heightened tendency to place higher-risk cases to minimize serious child injuries and resulting lawsuits, higher birth parent unemployment and substance abuse, and a lack of extended family supports. 3
· Every year, approximately 18,000 youth will emancipate — or "age-out"— from the foster care system when they reach age 18 or finish high school.
· Studies of youth who have left foster care have shown they are more likely than those in the general population to not finish high school, be unemployed, and be dependent on public assistance. Many find themselves in prison, homeless, or parents at an early.4
From the above statistics, it is pretty clear that there is a huge problem with children being in out of home placements, due to abuse and neglect, and the growing Meth problem is not helping anything. For more info on foster care, please visit fosterclub.com.

1 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2004a), p. xiii.

2 523,000 children were in foster care as of September 30, 2003.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children’s Bureau (2005), p. 1.

3 Besharov & Hanson (1994). Some of the greatest (disproportional) increases have taken place in the African American and American Indian communities. See, for example, Berrick, Needell, Barth, & Johnson-Reid (1998); Hislop, Wulczyn, & Goerge (2000); Wulczyn & Brunner-Hislop (2001); and Wulczyn, Hislop, & Harden (2002).

4 http://www.fosterclub.com/grownups/statistics.cfm