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• Child Welfare Outcomes Report Data Website Updated with 2007–2010 Data
  The Child Welfare Outcomes Report Data website (a section of the Children’s Bureau website) is now refreshed with data from 2007 through 2010. The site makes available the latest statistics from National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) and the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) for you to view in a variety of ways according to your needs. The website's report builder allows you to select: Specific State(s), data, and data years to view; how the data is displayed: graph, table, or map outputs; data to make comparisons and analyses across States.
  

• Child Welfare Outcomes 2003-2006: Report to Congress
  This publication is the eighth in a series of reports from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The report is designed to inform Congress and professionals in the child welfare field about the current performance of the States on several measures of outcomes for children served by child welfare systems throughout the country. The outcomes address the safety, permanency, and well-being of the children, and focus on widely accepted performance objectives for child welfare practice. Child Welfare Outcomes 2003-2006 is solely available in electronic format at the Children's Bureau's website. Here you can find the full report, along with an 8-page Executive Summary.

• National Adoption and Foster Care Statistics: AFCARS
  The Adoption and Foster Care Reporting and Analysis System (AFCARS) collects case level information on all children in foster care for whom State child welfare agencies have responsibility for placement, care or supervision, and on children who are adopted under the auspices of the State's public child welfare agency. Updated AFCARS data are now available on the Children’s Bureau’s website.

  The following documents have been updated or added:

  • Trends in Foster Care and Adoption for Fiscal Year (FY) 2002 through FY 2009, based on data submitted by states as of July 2010.
    
    
  • The AFCARS Report #17 which provides preliminary estimates for FY 2009 data as of July 2010.
    
    
  • State Specific Foster Care Statistics (Foster Care FY 2002- FY2009 Entries, Exits, and Numbers of Children In Care on the Last Day of each Federal Fiscal Year), based on data submitted by states as of July 2010
    
    
• Children in Public Foster Care on September 30th of Each Year who are Waiting to be Adopted (FY 2002 – FY 2009)
  This document provides a breakdown of the number of children in public foster care waiting to be adopted by State for each year (2002-2009). These data reflect all AFCARS submissions received by August of 2010. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau. (August 2010)
  

• Adoptions of Children with Public Child Welfare Agency Involvement by State (FY 2002 – FY 2009)
  This document provides a breakdown of the number of adoptions of children with public child welfare agency involvement by State for each year (2002-2009). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau. (August 2010)
  

• State Fact Sheets on Foster Care
  NRCPFC prepared these state fact sheets about foster care for the National Foster Care Month campaign. The fact sheets were updated in April 2011 with the most current available information as provided by the States

• Foster Care: Numbers and Trends
  This factsheet from the Child Welfare Information Gateway provides the most recent national statistical estimates for children in foster care from fiscal year (FY) 2003 and also provides earlier data from FY 1998 to allow for some estimate of trends over time. Data were obtained from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS). AFCARS collects case-level information on all children in foster care for whom State child welfare agencies have responsibility for placement, care, or supervision and on children who are adopted under the auspices of the State's public child welfare agency.

• State by State Foster Care and Adoption Statistics
  The Children's Bureau also provides some state-by-state data.

• Data on Children in Foster Care from the Census Bureau
  This paper from the Annie E. Casey Foundation discusses quality and usefulness of the data on foster children derived from the Census Bureau's Decennial Census and American Community Survey (ACS). The second part of the paper uses the 2006 ACS to provide data on the characteristics of non-kinship family foster care households compared to all households with children. Overall, comparisons based on Census Bureau data show that households with foster children are disadvantaged compared to all households with children.

• Research Briefs from NSCAW
  Two research briefs provide information gathered from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW).
  • Who are the Children in Foster Care?, describes the characteristics, experiences of abuse/neglect, living situations, and status of 727 children who have been in foster care for one year.
  • Foster Children's Caregivers and Caregiving Environments provides some information about the families who care for children in foster care, children's perceptions of their caregivers and living arrangements, and reunification plans for this group of children.

• The Child Welfare Outcomes Annual Reports
  These annual reports to the Congress are required by the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA). Reports depict the performance of each States on seven national child welfare outcomes:
  • Reduce recurrence of child abuse and/or neglect,
  • Reduce the incidence of child abuse and/or neglect in foster care,
  • Increase permanency for children in foster care,
  • Reduce time in foster care to reunification without increasing re-entry,
  • Reduce time in foster care to adoption,
  • Increase placement stability, and
  • Reduce placements of young children in group homes or institutions.

• House Ways and Means Committee Green Book
  Section 11 of this annual publication, officially titled Background Material and Data on the Programs within the Jurisdiction of the Committee on Ways and Means deals with child protection, foster care, and adoption assistance. The Green Book provides updated data on major programs within the Committee's jurisdiction, as well as related programs and issues. It is compiled by the Ways and Means staff with the assistance of the Congressional Research Service and various Federal agencies.

• State Fact Sheets on Child Welfare Funding
  These state fact sheets from the Center for Law and Social Policy and the Children's Defense Fund describe the context for child welfare spending by providing data on abused and neglected children, children in foster care, children who have left foster care and children living with kin; identify the proportion of child welfare funding that comes from federal, state and local sources; describe the major federal funding streams that are used to support child welfare and what proportion of child welfare funding comes from each of these sources; and highlight expenditures and trends within the Title IV-E Foster Care Program, including expenditures for foster care maintenance payments, administrative and child placement costs and training.

• State Fact Sheets on Foster Care
  The Kids are Waiting campaign, a project of the Pew Charitable Trusts, has produced fact sheets providing basic information about children in foster care in each state and the District of Columbia.

• Children with Disabilities and the Child Welfare System: Prevalence Data
  This paper from the Fall/Winter 2205/2006 issue of Impact reviews research statistics on the number of children with disabilities in the child welfare system.

• All Children Deserve a Permanent Home: Subsidized Guardianship as a Common Sense Solution for Children in Long-Term Relative Foster Care
  This report from Generations United provides state-by-state data on the number of children living in foster care with relative caregivers.

• Aging Out and On Their Own: More Teens Leaving Foster Care Without a Permanent Family
  This report from Kids are Waiting presents state-by-state data on the rising numbers of youth aging out without a safe, permanent family.

• Can AFCARS be Rescued? Fixing the Statistical Yardstick that Measures State Child Welfare Performance
  This study from the Children and Family Research Center applies special programming and analytical techniques to AFCARS data supplied by the Fostering Results partner states of Arizona, Illinois, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin to generate alternative prospective measures of child welfare outcomes, which can substitute for the standard retrospective measures currently utilized in the CFSR. It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of alternative plans in addressing the needs for quality data on child and family outcomes.

• Child Maltreatment Reports
  Annual reports that show state-by-state data on child abuse and neglect from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data Systems.

• Child Abuse and Neglect State Briefs
  These state-by-state fact sheets are from Fight Crime: Invest in Kids.
  
  
• Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect
  The National Incidence Study (NIS) is a congressionally mandated, periodic effort of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The principal objectives of the NIS–4 were to provide updated estimates of the incidence of child abuse and neglect in the United States and measure changes in incidence from the earlier studies. The NIS serves as the nation’s needs assessment on child abuse and neglect. It offers a unique perspective on the scope of the problem beyond the children that child protective service (CPS) agencies investigate. While the NIS includes children who were investigated by CPS agencies, it also obtains data on other children who were not reported to CPS or who were screened out by CPS without investigation. These additional children were recognized as maltreated by community professionals. Thus, the NIS estimates include both abused and neglected children who are in the official CPS statistics and those who are not. The fact that there have been three previous cycles using comparable methods and definitions means that one can compare NIS–4 estimates with those from the earlier studies in order to identify changes over time in the incidence and distribution of abused and neglected children. (2010)
  
  
• Interactive Map: U.S. Rates of Child Abuse Fatalities
  The federal government estimates child deaths from maltreatment using reports from law enforcement, child protection agencies and the judicial system. But federal officials say that not all child deaths come to their attention, and they have urged states to work with local agencies to get more comprehensive information. Hover over a state on this map on the National Public Radio website to see its estimated number of child deaths in 2007, as well as its rate of fatalities per 100,000 children. (March 2010)
  

Reports on Child Well-Being

• America's Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being
  Each year since 1997, the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics has published a report on the well-being of children and families. The Forum alternates publishing a detailed report, America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, with a summary version that highlights selected indicators. This year, the Forum is publishing America's Children in Brief; it will publish the more detailed report in 2009. The Forum updates all indicators and background data on its website every year.
  • America's Children: 2008

    Click on "Publications" to access reports for the years 1997 through 2006.

  • 1996 Trends Report

• National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being
  The NSCAW makes available nationally representative longitudinal data drawn from first-hand reports from children, parents, and other caregivers, as well as reports from caseworkers, teachers, and data from administrative records. This national study will examine child and family well-being outcomes in detail and seeks to relate those outcomes to their experience with the child welfare system and to family characteristics, community environment, and other factors. The study will describe the child welfare system and the experiences of children and families who come in contact with the system.

• 2010 State Fact Sheets and National Fact Sheet
  These fact sheets from the Child Welfare League of America provide descriptive information on the condition of vulnerable children in all fifty states and the District of Columbia, using indicators of child protection, health, child care, education, and income support. A National Fact Sheet is also available. The website also includes fact sheets from previous years, beginning in 2000.

• Youngsters' Mental Health And Psychosocial Problems: What Are the Data?
  This report from UCLA's Center for Mental Health in Schools details and evaluates the existing data from research on the prevalence and incidence of these problems and defines the research in this area that remains to be done. Includes some interesting data about children in foster care and kinship care including the information that preschoolers receiving mental health services were almost twice as likely as older children to be living with kin caregivers or foster parents – “a finding which means that caretakers who are not parents may need supportive services to ensure timely and appropriate help for the children in their care.”