Where You Live: A Guide to Sharing Foster Care Data
Foster Care in Your Community
Foster care statistics can feel overwhelming—especially large, national numbers. Your community can’t care for nearly 400,000 kids.
But where you live, you can work with others to care for the much smaller number of children and families who are actually in your community.
Wherever possible, county-level data is most effective at getting people engaged. You may have access to this county-level data via your child welfare agency’s website. If it isn’t available there, you could reach out to contacts you might have at social services. Use these county-level numbers, if you can get them!
Sharing Your Core Community Data
Insert your county’s data, and then use the suggested language to communicate about these data points. If you can’t get county data, there are links to state data sources.
Children in Foster Care
WHERE TO LOOK:
Your Local Social Services Office, AFCARS State Reports
How you might talk about the number of children in foster care:
When we talk about foster care, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by large, national numbers. So let’s look at foster care where we live, [COUNTY/STATE] . There are [NUMBER] children in foster care where we live. These are children and families right here in our community, and each and every one of us can do something to help them thrive.
Licensed Foster Homes
WHERE TO LOOK:
Your Local Social Services Office, Who Cares Report
How you might talk about the number licensed foster homes:
There are [NUMBER] of licensed foster families who can provide safe, temporary homes for children in our [COUNTY/ STATE]. [If there is a shortage of foster families in your community:] Because there aren’t enough foster families, children in our community are often placed outside our county, far from their friends, family, and schools. Further, because we don’t have enough families in our community able to take multiple children, siblings are often separated from one another—adding an additional layer of loss. Our community can close that gap, ensuring there are more than enough foster and kinship homes for every child to have an ideal placement.
Children Waiting to Be Adopted
WHERE TO LOOK:
Your Local Social Services Office, AFCARS State Reports
How you might talk about the number of children waiting to be adopted:
In our community, there are [NUMBER] of children in foster care who are waiting to be adopted. They can’t be safely reunited with their biological families and need loving, permanent homes. We can recruit and support adoptive families for these [NUMBER] children, providing them with stable family.
Digging Deeper into Your Community’s Data
Other types of data will help people in your community see the concrete needs within foster care and how they can meet those needs. The data points below can be more difficult to find, but they are compelling statistics for your engagement efforts.
Reunification Rate
WHERE TO LOOK: AFCARS State Reports, Your Local Social Services Office
How you might talk about the reunification rate:
The initial goal of foster care is reunification with safe biological family. In [YEAR], [PERCENTAGE] % of youth exiting foster care reunited with their parents or primary caregivers in [COUNTY/ STATE] . Supporting biological families with practical and relational care can help even more families get back together and shorten the time kids have to stay in foster care.
Children Placed Out of County
WHERE TO LOOK: Your Local Social Services Office
How you might talk about children being placed out of your county:
In [STATE/COUNTY], [NUMBER] of children are placed in homes outside their county because of a shortage of foster families. This means they have to move away from their school, friends, and familiar places, creating even more loss and trauma for kids and making visits with biological family more difficult. By supporting and recruiting foster and kinship families, we can keep these children in their communities.
Gather and Share Data Where You Live
Communicating this type of local data is essential to mobilizing your community and getting everyone working toward shared, realistic goals. We’re building a tool to compile local, county-level data to do just that. And we’re still gathering data for some communities.
If you get access to county-level data—or are going to contact social services for it and would like pointers on how to request the data–please contact us at morethanenough@cafo.org.