Fewer Young People Are in Foster Care in the U.S.

Today is World Adoption Day. To mark it, the following chart looks at the state of the foster care system in the United States. According to the latest data from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS), an estimated 391,098 children and young people (0-20 years old) were in foster care in the United States on September 30, 2021, the last day of the fiscal year. This is a 4 percent decrease from 2020 and an 8 percent decrease from 2019.

However, according to an interview by Scott Simon of NPR with Kevin Quint of the Nevada Division of Child and Family Services, there is currently a shortage of foster care families in the United States, with a drop in the number of homes since the beginning of the pandemic due to several reasons, such as people "changing their priorities during COVID" as well as recruitment efforts slowing because services were no longer able to go into communities.

The number of young people entering the foster care system has seen a general decline since 1998, when an estimated 559,000 children were reported to be in care. That is, aside from a period between 2013 and 2018, when the trend reversed temporarily. Media outlets and policy experts cite how this change was likely due to the opioid crisis, which resulted in more children and young people entering care as a result of their parents’ substance use disorders. Where 15 percent of children in foster care entered the system due to parental substance abuse in 2000, this figure had risen to 36 percent in 2017 and still hovers around that mark today.

The primary reason for children being taken into care in 2021 though was neglect, cited in 63 percent of cases. Youth Today reports how some experts criticize the term, saying neglect is just another word for poverty, and that this data highlights how many families are no longer able to provide for their children. “The system we have now doesn’t deal with the inequities that lead to families being homeless, children malnourished and families being deprived of adequate health insurance and income,” University of Pennsylvania Professor Dorothy Roberts told the news site in 2022. “The system calls that neglect and blames families for it.”

The states with the highest rates of young people under the age of 21 in foster care in 2021 were West Virginia (with 1,789 young people per 100,000), Alaska (1,462 per 100,000) and Montana (1,188 per 100,000).