Foster Care Statistics
How many children are actually in the foster system? According to Child Welfare Information Gateway, “On September 30, 2014, there were an estimated 415,129 children in foster care.” (Child Welfare Information Gateway). When we look at those over 400,000 children, how many of them actually stay within the family by going to relative foster home? Most of them, right? No, approximately only twenty-nine percent actually stay with a relative. An astounding forty-nine percent are put in homes that have no relation to them at all. This accounts for seventy-eight percent of the children in foster care, what about the rest of them? Well, here is where the rest of the breakdown is, eight percent are in institutions, six percent are in group homes, five percent are in trial homes, four percent are in pre-adoptive homes, one percent have ran-away, and the remaining one percent are in supervised independent living.
Now do all of these children eventually find their way back to their parents and or another relative within the family? Unfortunately, no they do not. What happens to them? Well when a child turns the age of eighteen they are considered an adult and are no longer kept in the foster system. Most children who turn eighteen while in the system actually leave the system with little or nothing. Below is a graph that shows percentages of what normally happens to children that are emancipated out of the system.
With the above percentages, how can it be said that children in foster care are actually benefiting from the system. Children according to this graph are coming out no better than when they went in.
What about gender? Do you think that there are more girls than boys in the foster care system? Well believe it or not, the numbers are pretty close to the same. According the National KIDS COUNT, in 2014 fifty two percent of the children in foster care were males and forty eight percent were females. The website below will actually show you the numbers for the years 2010 through 2014.
Wouldn’t it be better if we could go back to offering services for support to the biological parents before it gets too bad, so that children can stay with their families. Think about a three year old being pulled out of the only home that they know and placed in a home where everything is different and new. They lose all the friends that they may have and also the only people that they have ever loved. Don’t you think this may do more harm to them that good? There are extreme situations where the child should be removed, that is a given. We need to give them a chance and make sure they have stability and love.
