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Home > Statistics & Research > Trends in Foster Care and Adoption

Trends in Foster Care and Adoption—FY 2002-FY 2008
(Based on data submitted by states as of October 9, 2009)
Source: AFCARS data, U.S. Children's Bureau, Administration for Children, Youth and Families
Trends Chart: See detailed description below.


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Discussion of "Trends" Chart

Please note that, for all of the years shown, at least some of the data have changed slightly from earlier versions of this Trends Chart. This is due to the fact that some States have resubmitted their AFCARS data after addressing data quality issues. The foster care population data in the chart include data submitted to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) by States, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico by October 9, 2009. Adoption data were submitted by July 1, 2009.

Sub-population Definitions

  1. In foster care on the last day of the federal fiscal year (September 30): This is an estimated count of all the children in foster care on the last day of the year. An individual child is included in the count for each year for which he or she is in foster care on the last day.
  2. Entering care during the federal fiscal year: This is an estimated count of all children who enter foster care during the year. An individual child is counted only once for each year, even if the child entered, exited and re-entered care during the year. If an individual child entered in one year and then exits and re-enters in a subsequent year, he or she is included in the count of entries for both years.
  3. Exiting care during the federal fiscal year: This is an estimated count of all children who exited foster care during the fiscal year at the end of their most recent foster care episode. An individual child is counted only once for each year, even if the child exited, re-entered and exited again during the year. If an individual child exits care in one year and then re-enters and exits again in a subsequent year, he or she is included in the count of exits for both years.
  4. Children whose parents' rights have been terminated (TPR): This is an estimated count of the children in care on the last day of the year who are both waiting for adoption and whose parental rights have been terminated. An individual child is counted only once for each year. An individual child is included in the count for each year that he or she has these characteristics on the last day of the year.
  5. Waiting to be adopted: This is an estimated count of all children who are waiting to be adopted on the last day of the year. An individual child is included in the count for each year in which he or she is waiting to be adopted on the last day. There is no federal definition for children waiting to be adopted. For the purposes of this analysis, children waiting to be adopted include children with a goal of adoption and/or whose parental rights have been terminated. Children whose parents' rights have been terminated, who are 16 years old and older, and who have a goal of emancipation are excluded from the "waiting" population. An individual child is included in the count for each year that he or she has these characteristics on the last day of the year.
  6. Adopted: This is an estimated count of all children adopted during the year with public child welfare agency involvement. An individual child is counted only once for each year. In rare cases when a child is adopted multiple times, the child will be counted in each year he or she is adopted.
  7. Served: This is an estimated count of all children who were in the public foster care system during the year. This number is the sum of two mutually exclusive groups of children: the children who are already in care on the first day of the fiscal year (as of October 1) and the children who enter foster care during the year. An individual child is counted only once for each year.

Technical Discussion

Ideally, the count of children in foster care on the last day of the year plus the count of children exiting foster care during the fiscal year should equal the count of children served. They are equal in FY 2006 through FY 2008, but they are not equal in FY 2002 through FY 2005. The difference in those years is 1,000 or 2,000 children, which is less than 1 percent. Most of the difference can be attributed to estimation procedures and rounding.

An examination of the relationship between the number of exits and entries to the numbers of children\youth in care as of September 30th would imply that this population should be increasing (entries exceed exits), (with the exception of FY 2008), even though the number of children in care on September 30 is declining. The primary contributing factor to this phenomenon is that, in the AFCARS database, each child is counted only once and the information included on the child in the database is from their most recent foster care episode. However, there are some children who were in foster care on the first day of the year and exited and re-entered during the year one or more times prior to entering their most recent foster care episode. In addition, they remained in foster care through the last day of the fiscal year (September 30) in their most recent foster care episode. In these circumstances, the exit associated with their "in care" status on the first day of the year is not counted. We estimate that the number of these uncounted exits exceeds, on average, 8,000 annually.

There is also a data quality issue which has had an impact on the number of exits. AFCARS data are submitted every six months covering a six month period. Sometimes a child who is reported during one six month period does not appear in the next period, and there is no record that the child exited. Reviews of these cases have shown that the majority of these are situations in which the child actually exited, but the exit was not reported to AFCARS. However, because the actual number of these “dropped” exits cannot be calculated, they have not been accounted for in the exit count. As this issue has been brought to the attention of states, the quality of the data has dramatically improved and the number of dropped cases has decreased. While the number of dropped cases per year between FY 2002 and FY 2006 used to range between 8,000 and 10,000, now with resubmitted data from many states, the number of these dropped cases has declined from around 7,000 in FY 2005 to a little over 4,000 in FY 2007 and about 5,000 in FY 2008. This would constitute between 1 and 2 percent of the reported discharges in the two most recent years.

Data Discussion

Children in Foster Care on the Last Day of the Year: The data show that the decline in the estimated number of children in foster care on the last day of each federal fiscal year (September 30) resumed in FY 2006 after pausing in FY 2005. Between FY 2004 and FY 2005 the estimated number of children in care on the last day of the fiscal year increased from 508,000 in FY 2004 to 511,000 in FY 2005, but then dropped to 505,000 in FY 2006. For the first time since AFCARS data have been reported, in FY 2007 the estimated number of children in care on September 30 dropped below 500,000 to 491,000. In FY 2008 it dropped even lower, to 463,000. A similar pattern is seen in the total estimated number of children served during these years. After declining since FY 2002, the estimated number of children served increased from 787,000 in FY 2004 to 797,000 in FY 2005 and 798,000 in FY 2006. The total number of children served in FY 2007 dropped to 784,000 and in FY 2008 it dropped even lower to 748,000, the lowest number since AFCARS data have been reported.

Entries to Foster Care: After remaining under 300,000 until FY 2005, the estimated number of entries into foster care increased from 298,000 in FY 2004 to 307,000 in FY 2005. Since FY 2005, the number of entries has been declining down to 303,000 in FY 2006 to 293,000 in FY2007. In FY 2008, the estimated number entries into foster care dropped even further to 273,000, the lowest number since AFCARS data have been reported. The estimated number of exits which had increased between FY 2002 and FY 2007 from 278,000 to 293,000, declined to 285,000 in FY 2008, excluding the exits identified in the second and third paragraphs of the technical discussion.

Children Waiting to be Adopted: For the first time, the number of children waiting to be adopted dropped below 130,000 to 123,000 in FY 2008. The estimated number of waiting children whose parental rights had been terminated as of the last day of the year increased steadily from 74,000 in FY 2004 to 81,000 in FY 2007. The number declined in FY 2008 to 75,000. As a percentage of the children waiting to be adopted, those children whose parental rights had been terminated constituted 61 percent in both FY 2007 and FY 2008, representing a small increase over the 59 percent in FY 2006.

Children Adopted: Between FY 2002 and FY 2007, the number of adoptions remained relatively flat, ranging between 50,000 and 52,000. For the very first time since AFCARS data have been reported, the number of adoptions increased to 55,000 in FY 2008.