The Florida foster care stats you’ve been waiting for: 24,152 kids in out-of-home care & which CBC is the biggest?
It’s been awhile since I posted a pile of graphs, so here we go. Out-of-home care numbers are still rising. That’s probably not a good thing.
The number of children in out-of-home care continues to rise. The number of children in their homes under DCF supervision is a little down. This suggests we’re removing kids faster than we can obtain permanency for them.
All is not equal in the types of placements. Relatives are still shouldering most of the burden for foster care.
Relative placements continue to be the largest single placement type for kids, growing faster than licensed family care. Facility placements have been flat for some time. Non-relative placements have seen an over 60% increase since funding was authorized for these placements in 2014.
Finally, which CBC is really the biggest? It has always depended on how you measure.
The relative ranking of each region has been fairly consistent, even with increases and decreases in the statewide number of children in care. Most regions are rebounding to their pre-2007 days, with the exception of the Southern Region which is still comparatively low.
The rankings of CBCs by size has also been fairly consistent over time. Our Kids and Eckerd Hillsborough have consistently supervised the largest number of children. Again, some CBCs have rebounded, others haven’t. (Note these numbers don’t show where new CBCs took over for closed ones.)
The rankings are very different when viewed as children in care per 1,000 children in the community. For example, Our Kids has consistently ranked as one of the smallest CBCs in proportion to its geographic area.
The numbers here are from DCF’s Child Welfare Trend Reports. DCF keeps their own visualizations at the Child Welfare Dashboard. If you see anything wrong, interesting, or that-I-missed, let me know. Have a great weekend!
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