Earlier today, the Administration for Children and Families released their annual report on U.S. Foster Care and Adoption statistics. You can view the full AFCARS report here. We provide a detailed breakdown below, but in short, the report shows that children are spending too long in foster care and too long awaiting adoption .
The AFCARS report provides adoption and foster care data each fiscal year. The newest report shows data from fiscal year 2022 (Oct. 1, 2021 - Sept. 30, 2022). While this is the most current federal data available, it is important to note this data is over one year old by the time it reaches the public.
In general, FY 2022 saw a continuation of the downward trends we have seen since FY 2018 and FY 2019 across many significant factors, including the number of children entering foster care, the number of children exiting foster care, the number of children waiting to be adopted, and the number of children who were adopted.
Rather, our goal should be to reduce child maltreatment rates, reduce time spent outside permanent family care, and reduce timeframes and numbers of children awaiting adoption.
FY 2022 saw the fewest number of adoptions from foster care since FY 2015. For the fourth year in a row, there was a decrease in the number of children in foster care, with 368,530 in care. The number of children in foster care awaiting adoption also decreased, to 108,877, the lowest point since FY 2014. The total number of exits from foster care was 201,372, constituting the fewest number of exits from foster care since AFCARS reporting began.
The number of children adopted from foster care in FY 2022 was 53,665. This was only a 1% decrease from the year prior, but over an 18% decrease from FY 2019, marking FY 2022 as having the fewest number of adoptions from foster care since FY 2015.
“Children awaiting adoption”, also known as “children available for adoption”, describes children whose parental rights have been terminated and/or children with a case plan goal of adoption. In FY 2022 30% of all children in foster care were awaiting adoption. This data also shows that for every child adopted from foster care, two children remained in care who were awaiting adoption . While the number of children adopted decreased slightly in FY 2022, when compared to the total number of children in foster care, the percentage of children awaiting adoption (30%) and the percentage of children adopted (15%) remained almost exactly the same as the prior year.
Additionally, we want to highlight children who are living in pre-adoptive homes, since this often indicates that a child is closer to achieving permanency. Over 85% of children available for adoption were not living in a pre-adoptive home, meaning that many of these children may still be many steps away from achieving permanency.
