The number of children and youth in foster care nationally rose for the fifth consecutive year, to 443,000, in federal fiscal year (FY) 2017. While still below the high of 567,000 in FY 1999, the FY 2017 number is a 1.5 percent increase from FY 2016 and a 12 percent increase from FY 2012, when the number of children and youth in care began rising after more than 10 years of decline. At the state level, Child Trends’ analysis of the newly released Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting System (AFCARS) data shows that most states (39) experienced an increase from FY 2016 in the rate of children and young people in foster care. These rates range from a low of 2.5 per 1,000 children in Virginia to a high of 17.8 per 1,000 in West Virginia.
The map below shows the number and rate of children ages 17 and younger in foster care for every state, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
Several factors contribute to the number of children in foster care in a given state—for example, different thresholds for entering foster care, or variations in services available to support the reunification of children and families. One contributing factor has received considerable policy and media attention over the last several years: the increase in opioid use and overdoses. Of the states with the highest rates of opioid overdose deaths in 2016 (West Virginia, New Hampshire, Ohio, the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Massachusetts), all but the District of Columbia had increases in foster care rates. West Virginia had both the highest opioid overdose death rates and foster care rates.
[For more on this story by Sarah Catherine Williams, Kristin Sepulveda, go to https://www.childtrends.org/20...re-rose-in-39-states]
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