National Trends Shaping the Future of Foster Care 2013-2022

 “If a child spends one night in a facility, they have a 91% chance of aging out of foster care without a family.”  This grim statistic was cited by Virginia’s Safe & Sound Task Force lead, Janet Kelly, referencing 147 children who’d spent more than six months in a congregate care facility due to the shortage in foster care families.  While experts and advocates agree there is a foster care crisis in Virginia – and the United States – understanding disparate trend and outcomes data and statistics is an urgent need if we are to decipher the magnitude of the problem and determine exactly what to do about it. 

Using data to guide decisions is at the heart of efforts to reduce the need for foster care, provide individualized care for young people in the child welfare system, and also alleviate the obstacles inherent in providing foster care or adopting a foster child.  However, it’s impossible to separate what is often lagging data from influencing factors, such as resource capacities, systemic bias, well-intentioned policy changes, and quickly evolving trends resulting in family crises.  Working with over two decades of industry data, FosterVA lent frontline insights on inextricable data sources to produce a foster care trend analysis.  It begins to tell the story behind the numbers…and where we go from here.  The trend report validates troubling statistics that reconcile with insider experiences to reveal gaps and misinterpretations that may leave more foster children, teens, and families without the resources they urgently need.

The previously mentioned “91% chance of aging-out” cannot be understood simply as the result of time in congregate care.  Rather, the cause stems from some combination of factors: perhaps the trauma that led to the attention of Child Protective Services (CPS) in the first place, being separated from parents and/or siblings when entering the foster system, and the unsafe feeling when life becomes the chaos and uncertainty many kids experience in foster care.  One young foster child, “Cara,” described this fear as “bunny-like,” the terror of a small prey animal unable to hide from the imminent reach of a predator.  This experience, whether over a day or years, no matter whether in a biological home, with a foster family, or in congregate care, creates lasting trauma for any child or teen.

Meanwhile, nearly 400,000 children are currently in foster care and urgently need a safe home and a nurturing, reliable adult: not just at this moment, but throughout their childhood development years.  Their stories are hidden within two decades of data illuminating policy decisions and other impact points, but lacking a clear path forward based on outcomes.  Well-meaning advocates, experts, social services and legislative bodies, foster agencies, and licensed parents seek to help, often starting with foster care statistics to shine a light on the need and chart a better course forward.  The crisis is felt in Virginia, where foster child outcomes are among the worst in the nation. Virginia is consistently at the bottom rung of outcome metrics, including aging out of foster care without a family or social services support net (16% vs 9% nationally) and the related statistic of reunification with parents (27% vs 47% nationally). 

Despite a noted decrease in the official year-over-year trends, around 5,000 of the nation’s nearly 400,000 children are in Virginia foster care.  These figures starkly underscore the ongoing challenges within the child welfare system.  “The year-over-year reduction of total kids in care is not the good news it appears on the surface to be,” says Nanette Jorge, President of FosterVA and Extra Special Parents (ESP), partnering foster care services for children and families across the Commonwealth.  “We’d like to pat ourselves on the back and think that with the help of our industry’s advocacy, fewer kids need help.  Instead, within these decreases are indications that something else is at play: fewer resources, policy decisions that impact resource allocation, and systems that stifle innovation in streamlining care.”    

In contrast to downward trends in AFCARS-based total kids in care, there are reliable indicators of an increase in the child welfare crisis that could fall under CPS authority.  Naomi Schaefer Riley, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and author of No Way to Treat a Child, reports that every year, about three million calls are made to child abuse hotlines, with over 600,000 cases substantiated by abundant evidence to take action.  In the most severe cases, children are removed from their homes and placed into foster, kinship, or group care settings.  With additional resources to establish sufficient investigative evidence and provide child and family services, the portion of cases requiring ongoing attention for affected children would be higher.

For those already in the foster care system, older children, teens, and siblings face the greatest obstacles in finding foster and adoptive families.  As a result, siblings are frequently separated to meet space and housing requirements, and teens transitioning to adulthood often age out of foster care without a high school diploma, home, or support resources from either family or the state.  Compounding circumstances for teens who’ve aged out lead to sometimes consequential statistics showing high odds of homelessness, pregnancy, drug abuse, and interactions with law enforcement.

Evolving trends in foster care needs demand new responses and care approaches.

A mind-numbing myriad of circumstances led to the 550,000+ children known to authorities to have been victims of abuse or neglect in 2022.  This is a small portion of the 7.5 million kids that U.S. Child welfare authorities have on their safety watch, close to 3 million of whom were included in an investigative or actionable response from CPS agencies.  Add in the number called in without sufficient evidence to act, along with the incalculable number never called in, and the picture comes into sharp focus about the vital role of U.S. Child Protective Services and the multi-pronged need for solutions ranging from interventions to foster care, kinship care, and family services.  

Since at least 2015, parental drug abuse, exacerbated by the opioid epidemic, has become a leading factor causing children to enter foster care, with the largest percentage increase in children under five years old.  In 2019, JAMA Pediatrics reported a 147% increase in foster care entries due to parental drug abuse.  Always-present ripple effects include a correlative increase in the number of children accidentally ingesting illicit drugs at home, which one study suggests is reported in less than half of all cases. 

The first mission of the foster care system is to rehabilitate families to enable reunification.  Services provided include material support, parenting classes, and anger management training, among others.  However, in cases involving severe abuse, and chronic or cyclical neglect due to drug abuse relapses, reunification may not be in the best interest of the child.  This raises significant ethical and practical questions about the balance between preserving biological family ties and ensuring the child’s safety, well-being, and opportunity to form lasting bonds during critical developmental periods. 

FosterVA in partnership with Extra Special Parents (ESP) in Virginia has been tracking foster care trends as reported in AFCARS, the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, and providing interpretative analysis to the academic analysis by FosterVA contributor, Jessica Kingswell, M.Sc., M.A..  Kingswell noted, “Short of producing clear answers, AFCARS tracking reveals the effects of policy and socioeconomic influences on foster care over time.  Without proper context from a range of good data sources, good intentions can have a troubling impact on child and family resource allocations and solutions.”  FosterVA’s proprietary analysis and real-time experience working in children and family services tell a more detailed story about the most vulnerable members of our community: foster children. 

AFCARS’ central tracking repository is vital for reporting that informs developing strategies to create more stable and nurturing environments for children and to reduce their time in the system.  Fundamentally, while it is the single best data tracking resource, AFCARS lags by two years and reflects numbers and trends at the mercy of policy changes and social and political tides, the 2020 pandemic being one recent example.  The evolution of the foster care system from 1998 to 2022 has revealed significant trends and challenges.  

Kingswell’s analysis showed that in the past 24 years, the foster care system has experienced a 34% decrease in the number of children in care, from about 559,000 in 1998 to 368,000 in 2022.  Despite this overall reduction, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic highlights continuing volatility and the need for stable youth support systems.  At a decline of 5.8%, 2022 had the second-highest annual drop in recorded history.  Outside of the watchful eyes of education and healthcare administrators, many children who desperately needed safe and stable families were invisible and trapped inside abusive or neglectful homes.  This example demonstrates policy impacts of lower resources, rather than a reduction in the tangible need for child protective services and foster care.

There is increasing pressure to keep children out of the foster care system and to maintain biological families whenever possible. In theory, this makes sense.  Yet, in some instances, in what is termed as “hidden” foster care, relatives are asked by government agencies to care for children who would otherwise be placed in formal foster care settings.  Data supports that kinship care, defined as care by a biological relative or close family friend, helps children maintain cultural and community connections, often within the same school district and social support network.

Critics argue that this focus on kinship care as a means of keeping children out of the foster care system instead results in these caregiving relatives receiving a lack of resources and support.  They often accept a caregiving role without notice and pay out of pocket for expenses, such as healthcare and education, which contrasts sharply with the support benefits associated with state foster care.  While no federal response is forthcoming, Virginia is an example of state-level attempts to make progress. 

States, including Virginia, point out the recognized benefits of keeping foster children connected through relatives, and many seek to enshrine programs that offer relatives and close family friends the same support resources that foster parents receive.  The Virginia Parental Child Safety Placement Program was enacted in July 2024 and outlines guidelines to help children living with approved relatives outside of the foster care system.  While the state passed a kinship care bill, it falls short of the resources needed; Kinship families receive financial assistance but do not receive case management resources or any standard of guidance. 

Based on AFCARS data, Kingswell’s trend analysis shows a notable shift in the demographic makeup of children in foster care nationally.  In 1998, the foster care child population was about 65% non-white to 35% white children.  By 2022, the proportions shifted to 57% and 43%, respectively.  Based on historical proportions, this change reflects 28,500 more white children in care than expected.  This shift in proportions calls into question whether there are cultural systemic biases or other influencing factors that have dramatically altered visibility or applied resources away from children and communities of color, or if the evolution of underlying causes of kids entering care has seen an authentic shift of another direct or multi-variate cause. 

The non-white category has seen additional significant shifts within racial subgroups.  African American children have consistently represented the largest proportion of non-white kids in care, but the total number of children in this segment has steadily decreased over time.  In 1998, Black youth comprised 66.1% of non-white children in foster care.  Despite decreasing totals of foster children, this cohort remained significantly overrepresented, constituting 39.4% of non-white children in care according to AFCARS 2022.

Large swings are apparent within another significant category of the non-white population, as well.  Hispanic children represented 23.4% in 1998, a figure that by 2022 has grown significantly to 37.5% of the non-white subgroup.  However, Hispanic children as a percentage of total kids in the system has grown from 15% to 22%.  Similarly, mixed-race foster youth, who accounted for a mere fraction of the foster care population in 1998, have grown to represent 8% by 2022.  Causes could be as simple as how officials designate these subgroups, or as significant as systemic bias reflected through limited intake resources and foster family preferences.

The data underscores the changing dynamics within multiple aspects of the system and the need for culturally competent practices and a diverse and well-prepared pool of foster parents.

The average age of children in foster care nationally has been on a steady 15% decline; from 9.6 years in 1998 to 8 years old in 2022.  The proportion of younger children in care aged 0-5 years has increased from 25% to 35%, correlating to the lower overall average age and the increase in the most impacted age group of 0-5 years.  This correlates to the most impacted segment of foster children entering care due to parental substance abuse, too.  All indications are that we can expect a continuing downward evolution of younger children entering the system during critical windows for healthy child development.

Federal funding, which constitutes about half of the state and county resources for foster care, comes with stipulations designed to prevent children from languishing indefinitely in the system.  The Adoption and Safe Families Act mandates that states move to terminate parental rights if a child remains in foster care beyond a specified timeframe.  Despite efforts to reduce time in care, the average duration has increased since 2018, now averaging around 24 months.  This is down from its 1998 high of 33 months, but significantly up from the 2010 low of 19.5 months.  This increase, beginning even before the pandemic, calls for renewed efforts to expedite processes and increase support to move children more swiftly into permanent, loving homes.  This is particularly critical for children under 3 years old, who are in the midst of critical development years, including attachment. 

One of the unmitigated tragedies of our foster care system stems from our legal system’s well-intentioned attempt to give parents every opportunity to meet court requirements and bring their children home.  Even for the most committed parents, toddlers at this critical development stage are often abruptly torn away from foster homes and the only parents they have ever known.  Data is not tracked for how many children during this developmental stage return to foster care a second or multiple times, nor how parents who suffer from addiction may have uniquely volatile struggles in their efforts to stay clean and financially stable while raising their children.

Looking forward, challenges in reunification, parental substance abuse, mental health struggles, and legal complexities delay permanency for many children. These issues, coupled with increased goals for adoption and guardianship, reflect the pressing need to comprehensively address the systemic challenges within foster care and reassess the balance of priority needs between parents and their children growing up in foster care.

“As we continue to monitor trends and navigate these changes, we will continue to focus on ensuring safety, stability, and nurturing family care for every foster child in Virginia,” said Nanette Jorge.  “As every foster child’s frontline care team, it’s imperative that we strengthen intervention services, enhance support and respite for foster families, and advocate for policy changes that prioritize the well-being and permanency of foster children.”

As a foster care agency partnership, FosterVA and ESP continually innovate within the boundaries of the foster care system to identify prospective caring and capable foster and adoptive parents, then train and guide these caregivers through the Virginia state foster parent approval and licensing process.  Compiling and analyzing data from the most highly regarded resources, such as AFCARS, FosterVA and its partners continually seek to address and advocate for foster children as the most vulnerable members of our society. 

The number of children in foster care reflects societal crisis trends, limited resources, and systemic bias, along with national and state policy decisions.  It doesn’t represent a direct indicator of the status and trends of child welfare and our foster care system.  To truly address the needs of foster youth, legislative and local governance agencies must consider both the immediate and long-term impacts of our child welfare policies.  This includes ensuring adequate support for all forms of care, prioritizing the development needs of children, resources for foster and foster-to-adopt families, and transitional support networks for foster teens aging out of the system. 

Decision-makers and service providers within the child welfare and foster networks need to recognize the shortcomings of our data-gathering systems, reconcile lived experiences against misleading influencers on foster care trends, and adapt our national and state-level data resources and strategies based on outcomes rather than intentions.  By understanding the unfolding storyline across our country’s network of information, we must act to rewrite the vital next chapters for our nation’s children and families.

- FosterVA