Most Kids Exiting Foster Care Reunited With Family in 2016

The lat­est sta­tis­tics on chil­dren exit­ing fos­ter care are encour­ag­ing — and they align with the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s long­stand­ing belief that fam­i­lies belong together.

In 2016, 250,200 kids exit­ed the U.S. fos­ter care sys­tem. Most of these chil­dren (66%) were reunit­ed with a fam­i­ly mem­ber — a group that includes par­ents and pri­ma­ry care­givers (50%), guardians (9%) and rel­a­tives (7%). Approx­i­mate­ly one in every four kids exit­ing care was adopted.

The major­i­ty of chil­dren depart­ing fos­ter care in 2016 were young: 40% were between the ages of 0 and 5 and 64% had not yet cel­e­brat­ed their 11^th birthday.

Near­ly half (45%) of kids exit­ing care were white.

More Fos­ter Care Exit Data

Explore more child wel­fare data — at the nation­al and state lev­el — in the KIDS COUNT Data Center.

• Chil­dren exit­ing fos­ter care
• Chil­dren exit­ing fos­ter care by age group
• Chil­dren exit­ing fos­ter care by gender
• Chil­dren exit­ing fos­ter care by race and His­pan­ic origin
• Chil­dren exit­ing fos­ter care by exit reason