NEW YORK — The number of U.S. children in foster care has dropped for the sixth straight year, falling to about 400,000 compared with more than 520,000 a decade ago, according to new federal figures.
The drop results primarily from a shift in the policies and practices of state and county child-welfare agencies. Many have shortened stays in foster care, expedited adoptions and expanded preventive support for troubled families so more children avoid being removed from the home in the first place.
The new figures released by the Department of Health and Human Services show there were 400,540 children in foster care as of Sept. 30. That’s down from 406,412 a year earlier and from about 523,000 in 2002.
State by state, the picture was mixed. Some states extended dramatic declines, and the numbers in other states rose.
Richard Wexler of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, which seeks to reduce the number of children unnecessarily placed in foster care, noted that the nationwide decline in foster care numbers was smallest since 2006. He noted that for the time since then, more children entered the system last year than exited from it.
Of the 245,260 children who left the system, 26,286 of them “aged out” without ties to their parents and with no other home.
