Foster Care Facts

A foster parent, also known as co-parenting, is a temporary obligation you have towards a child who comes into care. The State places children in foster care because the biological parents neglect or abuse them.

Foster Care Facts

Fact: It is affordable to adopt from foster care. Most child welfare agencies will cover the costs of the home study and court fees, as well as provide post-adoption subsidies.

Fact: In 2009, 69,900 parents had their parental rights terminated by the courts, only 57,400 of these children were adopted.

Fact: In foster care, children will often move as many as three or more times.

Fact: In many cases, foster children are separated from their siblings.

Fact: the average age of children waiting to be adopted in foster care is 8 years old, many of the children over the age of 8 will never find a permanent home.

Fact: 63% of children in foster care are re-abused. The foster care system is taking kids away from parents who abuse them and handing them to people who abuse them and they are being paid.

Fact: Some foster parents care more about the money they will earn from being a foster parent than the foster child themselves.

Fact: In many states the "age out" for a foster child is 18. On the day of their birthday before midnight, they must leave foster care.

With their suitcase and belongings in hand, but no coping skills or resources to negotiate adulthood and off they go by themselves. In many cases, they end up homeless, incarcerated or institutionalized.

Fact: last year, 29,471 children turned 18 and left the foster care system without an adoptive family

Allow them into your life. Not just as a mother or a father, but a sister or brother, or friend. Hundreds of thousands of kids do not know what family and love really is. And they won't unless we find it in our hearts to help.

Nearly 40% of American adults or 81.5 million people, have considered adopting a child. If just one in 500 of these adults adopted, every waiting child in foster care would have a permanent family.

So if your wanting to expand your family, or just wanting to let them know you care. Don't wait, because they've already waited too long.

Every child is adoptable and many of them are in foster care. They all deserve a chance to grow up in a safe, loving, and permanent home where support and other post-adoption resources are available.

History of Foster Care

Providing foster care is a practice that has been around since biblical times, but in the early 1900's fostering became a part of a professional team working to find permanency for dependent children.

Social services soon became involved and began working to place children in appropriate homes for stability. Any information concerning the child is collected and kept on file. This way the individual needs of the child are considered when a placement for them occurs.

If you are interested in learning more about the history of foster care go here.

* A formal system by which a child is cared for, in a foster family, by people other than their own parents, but without being adopted.

* Placing a child in the temporary care of a family other than its own as the result of problems or challenges that are taking place within the birth family, or while critical elements of an adoption are being completed.

* Foster care is a system by which a certified, stand-in "parent(s)" cares for minor children or young people who have been removed from their birth parents or other custodial adults by state authority.

Do you have any foster care facts you want to share? Maybe you have a fostering story to share or a question that you want to ask others at the foster parent forum.

For more foster care facts, you can read these articles

Being a Foster Parent
Why choose to foster? Who benefits?

Qualifications to be a Foster Parent
Qualifications included are age, health, ability, marital status....

Foster Parent Requirements
Documents required before being approved.

Foster Care Statistics

Foster Care Home Study Questions
Each member of your household will be interviewed. Some questions....

What does becoming a foster parent mean to you?
Share your thoughts with others.

Kids in Foster Care
What really happens with kids in foster care isn’t something that is often discussed among the public.

Adopting from Foster Care
School issues, behavior and possible prevention.

Long Term Foster Care
Long term foster care (also referred to as permanency)….

Foster Care Abuse
Foster care abuse is sometimes more likely to occur in foster homes than in a child's own home.

Foster Care Group Homes
Foster care group homes are supervised living arrangements for any minor or adult who is unable to….

Aging Out of Foster Care
Once foster children reach adulthood they no longer qualify to be in the foster care system. This is what is known as aging out of foster care.

Our Foster Child Adoption Story

Return from Foster Care Facts to Children for Adoption

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