Monday, May 26, 2014

May Is National Foster Care Month

Did you know May is National Foster Care Month?   Or I guess I should say was, since the month is almost over.  Though I don't have some stellar series of posts for the month like some bloggers out there, I thought I would toss out there some stats, facts and numbers about foster care and adoption through CPS, for our county, the state of Texas and the nation.

Kids removed from Texas homes during 2013:
17,022

Kids in DFPS conservatorship (the state of Texas as their legal guardian) at the end of 2013:
Texas   27,924
McLennan County   564

Licensed foster homes:
Texas   10,285
McLennan County   84

Average number of placements, i.e. number of times a child moves among foster homes, for cases resulting in:
Reunification 1.9
Adoption by non-relative 3.0
Emancipation ("aging out" at 18) 6.9

Results of exit from DFSP conservatorship in 2013:
Reunification              5,647  32.4%
Custody to relatives   4,908  28.10%
Relative Adoption      2,676  15.3%
Non-relative Adoption 2,688  15.4%
Emancipated               1,328  7.6%
Other                           198  1.1%

Source for Texas data

Children in foster care in the US in 2012:  397,091
Source

Kids who aged out of the system in the US in 2013 without permanent homes or families: 23,439
Source

Kids in the US in 2012 waiting to be adopted: 101,569
Source

Kids in Texas in 2012 waiting to be adopted:  13,147
Source

To help this sink in, click here to see photos of children in Texas waiting to be adopted.   Did you click on it?  Keep scrolling, keep scrolling.  That's a lot of kids huh?  To bring it a little closer to home for those of you who live near me, click here to see a similar site for Central Texas alone.  Proceed with caution, major heart string tugging is bound to occur.

As this blogger said "These are not just numbers. These are children.

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