Skip to footer

Report: Number of children in foster care rises slightly after years of decline

The annual report from the US Department of Health and Human Services released Monday shows an uptick in US children in foster care, but the average stay of children in foster care getting shorter.

|
Lucy Nicholson/Reuters/FILE
Jasmine Boyle, 17, tries on a prom dress at the Glamour Gowns event in Los Angeles, California March 28, 2014. The event gives prom dresses to more than 350 young women in the Los Angeles foster care system every year.
  • By David Crary Associated Press

After dropping for seven straight years, the number of US children in foster care rose slightly last year, according to new federal figures released Monday.

The annual report from the Department of Health and Human Services tallied 402,378 children in the foster care system as of Sept. 30, 2013, up from about 397,000 a year earlier, but still down dramatically from a decade earlier. The peak was 524,000 children in foster care in 2002, and the number had dropped steadily since 2005.

The long-term drop resulted primarily from a shift in the policies and practices of state and county child welfare agencies. Many shortened stays in foster care, expedited adoptions and expanded preventive support for troubled families so more children avoided being removed from home in the first place.

"While we have seen these national numbers hold steady over the past few years, it's important to note that there is great variation among states and many are still reducing their foster care populations," said JooYeun Chang, associate commissioner of HHS's Administration on Children, Youth and Families.

The average length of stay in foster care has been reduced by more than 10 percent since 2002, according to the report. The mean stay is now 21.8 months.

Of the children in foster care a year ago, 52 percent were boys. Twenty-two percent were Hispanic, 24 percent black and 42 percent white; 101,840 of them were available for adoption.

During the 2013 fiscal year, 50,608 children were adopted from foster care, down from 52,042 in 2012, while 23,090 youths in their late teens aged out of the system without being placed with a permanent family.

Boosting the number of adoptions is one of the goals of a multifaceted bill that won final congressional approval on Sept. 18.

Titled the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act, it seeks to improve the system of offering incentives to states for facilitating adoptions out of foster care. Among its other provisions, the bill would require state child welfare agencies to promote "normalcy" for youth in foster care –  llowing them to more easily participate in age-appropriate social and academics activities.

The Washington Examiner reported Monday that California Governor Jerry Brown signed a series of bills to support youth in foster care, including early placement with relatives and housing support for those who have aged out of foster care and are enrolled in college.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Report: Number of children in foster care rises slightly after years of decline
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/2014/0929/Report-Number-of-children-in-foster-care-rises-slightly-after-years-of-decline
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe