Foster Care System
The Foster Care System is a Hidden Population
While the homeless presence is becoming more visible on our cities’ streets, the youth foster care population remains a fragmented community often hidden from view. Not a single system, numerous regional, state and private agencies provide varying solutions. Major problems in one locality may not be issues elsewhere.
Foster Care Statistics
From the 2020 AFCARS report:
15,975 youth were in group homes in 2020 (4%)
22,824 youth were in institutional care in 2020 (6%)
117,470 were in placement and waiting for adoption (29%)
216,838 entered foster care during that year (52%)
224,396 exited foster care during that year (55%)
631,832 children, in total, were served within the foster care system for 2020, a number greater than those enrolled in the Los Angeles Unified School District
“We must not allow this generation to produce record numbers for the juvenile justice, runaway and homeless youth, or foster care systems.”
Heartache Sundays
As children, we didn’t understand much about a “foster care system.” We just knew that we were taken away from our homes because they were broken, and we were at risk. That description traveled with us, within us. Three meals a day and a bed to sleep in did not fill the holes in our hearts.
Some Sundays were visiting days. I would watch a girl walk away from the cottage where we bunked. She was with a family member of some kind. Mostly, they walked slowly. A few mysterious hours together and the girl would return. The rest of us stayed behind, unable to move between worlds.
— Susan DuMond, author of Another Place Called Home