Since 2017, The Chronicle of Social Change has been working to build the first public resource on foster care capacity in the United States. Through the Who Cares project, data are collected directly from each state, and combined with specially obtained federal reports to shed light on two critical questions:
How many children and youth are in foster care today? And where and with whom are they living?
Both questions speak to a state’s foster care capacity, the quantity of each different option at its disposal in serving youth that child welfare agencies have decided cannot live at home. In general, the three main choices are:
• The homes of relatives and other unrelated “kin.”
• Non-relative foster homes recruited and trained by child welfare agencies.
• “Congregate care,” a slate of placements that include emergency shelters, group homes and institutions.
You can access the entire collection of annual data by visiting www.FosterCareCapacity.org. There you will find national overviews on some key indicators, and robust individual profiles for each state. They also include feature stories and op-eds from prominent state and national officials and stakeholders on some of the key subjects around foster care capacity.
This executive summary provides and overview of methodology and findings of the Who Cares project for 2019.